USA > Kentucky > History of Kentucky, Volume II > Part 88
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The present Town of Harlan, Kentucky, is built on the site of an old Indian village. The excavations for houses reveal relics and bones of this race. Collins says of these remains: "The first courthouse in Harlan County was built upon a mound in Mount Pleasant (this was the original name of Harlan)-upon which, in 1808, the largest forest trees were growing. In August, 1838, a new courthouse was erected upon the same mound, requiring a deeper foundation and more digging- with these discoveries: Human bones, some small, others very large, indicating that the bodies had been buried in a sitting posture; several skulls, with most of the teeth fast in their sockets and perfect; the skull of a female, with beads and other ornaments which apparently hung around the neck. Close by the larger bones was a half-gallon pot
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superior in durability to any modern ware, made of clay and periwinkles pounded to powder, glazed on the inside, and the outside covered with little rough knots nearly an inch in length. A neat and well-formed pipe of the usual shape and various other ornaments and tools evincing in- genuity and skill were found; also, charcoal in a perfect state apparently. The mound abounded in shells, bones and fragments of bones, in all stages of decay. They were found from three to five feet below the surface.
"In 1870 more human bones were dug from it, together with nicely polished weights and some pipes-made of hard blue stone."
Other Indian camps and relics were found at Station Camp, in Estill County ; three miles below Barbourville, in Knox County, on the north bank of the Cumberland; and the remains of old Indian towns around London, in Laurel County.
A man by the name of Cockrell, who lived in the Town of Cumber- land Gap, just under the Pinnacle on the Tennessee side, collected from all parts of the region around Cumberland Gap a large number of Indian relics. These he sold to Lincoln Memorial University at Harrogate, Tennessee, only a short distance from the Gap.
From these remains it would appear that there was more of an occu- pation, as suggested above, of the Indians than was taken up on long hunting trips. In former times, long before the time of our earliest pio- neers, there seems to have been an occupation of parts of the country by the Indians. Afterwards they either died out altogether or, which is more probable, moved to some other hunting ground, and made occasional excursions into Kentucky, as they were doing at the time of the coming of white men.
Early in the Civil war Cumberland Gap was considered of strategic importance. Mr. Shaler is authority for the statement that President Lincoln planned to have a railroad constructed to Cumberland Gap, and to have the position strongly fortified, "so that an army there might give an element of security to Central Kentucky and threaten the rebel lines of communication in Eastern Tennessee. His project, though excellent in its conception, was never carried out. This part of the state was never provided with any adequate defenses."
Kentucky declared her neutrality early in the year 1861, but so deter- mined were the Confederate forces to secure the state for their cause that Maj .- Gen. Leonidas Polk, nephew of President Polk, and General Zollicoffer agreed on an invasion of the state, thereby breaking the very neutrality the state had declared. Polk "took up a strong position on the bluffs that command the stream at Columbus and Hickman," while Zollicoffer moved through Cumberland Gap and took up his position on the foothills around Cumberland Ford six years before the first house was erected in old Pineville in 1867. In order to understand the strong position he took up it will be necessary to give a general description of the topography of the country around Cumberland Ford (the present Town of Pineville).
Around this valley are three high mountain peaks, 1,300 feet. They rise above the river, overlooking the valley, and are joined to mountains that extend southeast and northwest for long distances through the country. At the southern end of this valley Cumberland River breaks through Pine Mountain, forming two of these high peaks and flows in a half circle around the town to the north. This break, known as "The Narrows," is only about 100 to 200 feet wide-just wide enough for river and road beside it, with walls of almost perpendicular height on each side. An army invading the Cumberland Gap region from Central Kentucky would necessarily have to pass up the river through the Nar- rows to the Gap. Two miles north of the Narrows, at the northern end
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of the present town of Pineville, the mountains close in to within 1,200 feet of each other. Here, on the brow of a hill that projects from the main mountain on the east side of the river and commands a good view of this pass to the entrance of the valley from the north, strong breast- works were thrown up, overloking the present suburb of the Town of Pineville known as West Pineville. The breastworks are in good state of preservation even today.
Further up Cumberland River, on the same side, another foothill from the same mountain is wedged in between the mouth of Straight Creek, which flows into Cumberland River from the east, and the river, which holds a commanding view of Cumberland Ford, the only suitable crossing place in the river for miles around. Breastworks were thrown up on this hill and from this fact is known today as Breastworks Hill. Most of these have been leveled down to make room for a section of Pineville that has been built on it; but on the sides of the hill around this portion some traces of them are still visible.
From the southwest, just south of the Narrows, Clear Creek flows into Cumberland River. Broad bottoms, known as the Moss Farm. spread out around the mouth of this creek and, in order to protect the Narrows from a movement from the south, which was not likely, since the Confederates held the country south of Cumberland Gap. a detach- ment of men was placed in a commanding position here. and guards were posted up Clear Creek as far as Smith Hill, two miles away.
Zollicoffer did not remain here long and moved to Central Kentucky by way of Barbourville. The first fight in the state was an engagement between this army and some Home Guards. At Wildcat Mountain, near London, he was met by the Seventh Kentucky Regiment under General Garrard. After reinforcements joined General Garrard, the Confed- erates retired from before the strongly defended position of Garrard's force.
General Johnston's Confederate army was sorely pressed in Western Kentucky and Tennessee, and, wishing to divert attention from his perilous position, decided to make another attack in Eastern Kentucky. Gen. George B. Crittenden, who held an entrenched position on the north side of Cumberland River, at Beech Grove, Pulaski County, was ordered to make the attack. Gen. George H. Thomas, with his Federal force, was moving against this position when General Crittenden decided to beat General Thomas to the attack. So, with 5,000 men, General Zolli- coffer was sent against Thomas. The engagement was the most fiercely contested one in the Mississippi Valley up to that time. The receiving of reinforcements by Thomas and the death of General Zollicoffer by a pistol shot from Col. Speed Fry turned the tide of battle, and the Con- federates with difficulty fled across Cumberland River. "The battle of Mills Spring, or Logan's Cross Roads, though the total killed and wounded did not exceed 600, was a remarkably well contested fight. The men of both sides were unused to war, yet they showed the endurance of veterans."
The battle of Perryville was a draw, amid misconceptions on both sides. Sheridan, who was in charge of the action under Buell, who was at some distance from the conflict, thought he was in contact with the whole of Bragg's army, when in fact Bragg had only about one-third of his army there. This made Sheridan very cautions. The Confederates, on the other hand, considered that they were dealing with an inferior force, only a fragment of Buell's army, and could wait their time for the men to rest still the next day for the engagement. Buell had a large army there, much larger than Bragg's, and when Bragg came up in the midst of the fight and saw the situation, he retreated and, by forced marches, outstripped Sheridan. Bragg then headed for Cumberland
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Gap and, by felling trees across the roads in the rear, escaped to Ten- nessee beyond Cumberland Gap.
General Stephenson, with his Confederate forces, had occupied Cum- berland Gap. The present site of the Town of Cumberland Gap, on the Tennessee side, was a tented field of warriors. Roads were constructed from Tennessee and Virginia up into the Gap, around the mountain by the Gap and beyond on the same side, and down into the Yellow Creek Valley on the Kentucky side. Strong breastworks were thrown up on the rugged mountain sides in this Gap, and the pass was guarded on both sides for miles around.
Today traces of this occupation are visible all about the Gap. Just
BIRTHPLACE OF GEN. ALBERT S. JOHNSTON
beneath the Pinnacle on the Kentucky side are great breastworks that have been thrown up and are now in a fairly well preserved condition. Trees with trunks larger than a man's body have grown up in and around them.
On the low ridges back of Cumberland Gap town are long rows of pits from which the bodies of the soldier-dead were taken after the war. The hard ground on these hilltops has kept them in a pretty good state of preservation.
Confederate General Stephenson, by threat of invasion, was driven from this impregnable position by Gen. George W. Morgan, the Federal general. He occupied the position for some time. But the Federal Gov- ernment at Washington, in the press of the war, seemed to forget about the force in Cumberland Gap. General Morgan found himself without provisions, and could obtain them only by foraging in the valleys of
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Virginia and Tennessee, which were held by the Confederates. Central Kentucky was also in the hands of the Confederates, and the mountain district could not be depended upon to furnish sufficient food to sustain his army. General Morgan was in a perilous situation.
There are two other gaps, Baptist Gap and Big Creek Gap, west of Cumberland Gap, which, it seems, General Morgan did not know about. or, knowing, failed to fortify. Gen. Kirby Smith at this juncture added another peril to his already perilous situation by entering the state through Big Creek Gap in the region of upper Clear Fork of Cumber- land River. But some men under Colonel Mundy, who were at that time stationed behind breastworks thrown up in the bluffs overlooking the Nim Smith Ford of Little Clear Creek, about a mile up from where the stream joins Big Clear Creek at Clear Creek Springs, and some sixth months' Ohio troops, who were in the region, were dispatched against General Smith at Big Creek Gap. This division, though cut to pieces, - checked the movement of the Confederates and enabled General Morgan to begin his retreat. He carried out a successful retreat for 200 miles across Kentucky, against a most carefully laid plan to trap him, to the Ohio River at Greenupsburg. It "was a long, running, starving fight, from which the force came out looking like an army of spectres, shoe- less, their clothing in tatters, and their bodies wasted by scant food. This retreat deserves to be remembered as one of the great exploits of the war and one of the most successful movements of its kind in military history."
The people of the mountains of Kentucky were strong for the Union. They, who owned few or no slaves and cared nothing for the slavery question, came into conflict with their neighbors in Central Kentucky and the bordering regions of Tennessee and Virginia. In fact, they, together with the other peoples of the Appalachian region around them, were caught between the two contending armies of the North and the South. In the Federal armies, and on their own part in many instances, they began the extermination of the rebels in the region. The rebels had some sympathizers among the people, who retaliated by killing Federal soldiers. Thus in this way feuds grew out of the Civil war. The rel- atives of the people who were killed took it up after the war and sought to settle the matter by killing others. In fact, they only added fuel to the fire, and long-standing feuds broke out in different parts of the mountains. Only a very small part of the population was engaged at any or all times in these feuds. Ninety per cent of the people, taking them as a whole, condemned them. Of course, this feudal warfare has a basis no doubt in individualism, which harks back to the Border wars of England and Scotland.
The mountain people of Kentucky, at a critical time in the history of the nation, were the balance of power in saving Kentucky for the union and thereby aided in turning the tide in favor of the Union in one of the greatest conflicts of history. The raw levies of General Garrard from the mountains of Kentucky were the first to strike a blow against the Confederacy in Kentucky, when they attacked General Zollicoffer at Wildcat Mountain.
Whether at New Orleans under Jackson, at Lake Erie under Perry, at King's Mountain under Shelby, under the battlefields of Mexico, in the Indian warfare of the Revolutionary times, or under George Rogers Clark in opening up the Northwest Territory, or the great World war, these mountain men have always shown that bravery under fire, that loyalty to their commander, that true marksmanship that have ever char- acterized the bravest of the people of any time or age.
Who are these people? Authorities are not so much divided on this question today as they once were. They are generally agreed that the
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mountain people of the Cumberland Gap region are of English and Scotch-Irish descent. A look at some of the more prominent pioneers will confirm this. Doctor Walker, the real discoverer of the region- the learned explorer who gave English names to the region-was a Vir- ginian of English extraction. Daniel Boone, the leading pioneer of the times, traced his descent to Exeter, England. It is said on good authority that one of the reasons for Daniel Boone wishing to leave his home on the Yadkin was because some Scotch people had moved into the neigh- borhood and were clearing away the forests too much to suit him. Here we have suggestions, in the lives of the people, of the character of the people-English and Scotch-who were moved southwestwardly in the direction of Cumberland Gap.
The union of these two peoples has made a strong and hardy people who, with the other peoples of the Appalachian region, have become the very backbone of patriotic America.
Some historians have tried to make a distinction between the ancestry of the people of the Bluegrass and the people of the mountains, but their statements cannot find support among the best authorities. Virginia was settled by the rural peoples of England, and Kentucky, being an off-shoot of the same settlement, traces her ancestry to the same source. Some of these people from Virginia, from choice, settled in the mountain region, and the others, from the same reason, settled in the Bluegrass or moved on farther west. Of course, the Bluegrass region pressed ahead more rapidly because of the more favorable physical conditions, and left the mountains to struggle for a century against almost insurmountable obstacles.
Shaler says: "This glance at the sources of population in Virginia is sufficient to show that, with the exception of the slaves, they came almost entirely from truly British people. This character it essentially retains to the present day. At the time of the Kentucky settlement it retained it almost altogether.
"In Virginia the colonists were principally from the country districts of England. Their absorbing passion was not for religious discussions ; it was for the possession of land, for the occupations and diversions of rural life. When their interests were involved they tended not to re- ligious disputations, but to politics. This appetite for land seems never to have been a part of the New England desires ; in Virginia and Ken tucky it was the ruling passion.
"A small portion of the Kentucky settlers came from Southern Mary- land and from Central North Carolina, societies essentially like that of Virginia in their general aspect.
"We have now traced, in brief outline, the conditions of the people who made the Commonwealth of Kentucky from the time of their set- tlement in this country to their exodus into Kentucky. We have seen that in the beginning they were mainly rural Englishmen, who came voluntarily to America, not generally under the influence of political or religious persecution, but with a view to bettering their condition as tillers of the soil. It was doubtless, on the whole, a selection of the best of the country blood of the mother England. None but the vigorous, the enterprising, the hopeful-minded, undertook such changes of life in those days. * From this picked people, after a century or more of development in Virginia, a second selection was made to found the new Virginia of the West."
Says Haney : "The settlers of Eastern Kentucky, the descendants of those Englishmen of five or six generations, were amalgamated with other stock; nevertheless, the English blood is predominant in the mountain people. Fortunately, the amalgamation was with the Scotch-Irish, a race which instilled into their veins a stream of blood which gave them greater
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courage, endurance and sturdiness to battle with the difficulties with which the pioneers of any country must contend."
Roosevelt, in his "Winning of the West," says: "Though mingled with the descendants of other races, they were nevertheless the predom- inant stock which formed the kernel of this distinctively American race, who were the pioneers of our people in their westward march-the van- guard of the army of fighting settlers who with ax and rifle made their settlement in the mountains."
Fiske, in speaking of the Scotch-Irish, says: "A few of them came to New England where they have left their mark, but the greater ma- jority of them came to Pennsylvania and occupied the mountain country west of the Susquehanna. Thence a steady emigration was kept up southwesterly along the Appalachian axis into the southern colonies." Speaking of the Ulster stream, he says: "From the same prolific hive came the pioneers of Kentucky and Tennessee with their descendants through to the Mississippi and beyond." Fiske and Roosevelt try to force the conclusion that the Scotch-Irish predominated, but this is not in accord with the latest and best view, which is better stated by Shaler.
William Aspenwall Bradley, says: "The length and conditions of my stay in the hill country gave me an unusual opportunity to become acquainted with the life and character of the mountain people, about whom, perhaps, more has been written and less actually known than about any other on the continent. It used to be the theory of historians, like Fiske, that they are the descendants of Scotch-Irish settlers. More recently the view has been advanced by Miss Ellen Churchill Semple and other Kentucky writers that the Cumberland Mountains, at least, are of English ancestry, and this view has been widely accepted, with the result that we hear much nowadays of the purest Anglo-Saxon blood on earth-whatever that may mean. To me it is clear that both strains mingle in Kentucky."
These people have a native intelligence, a resourceful intelligence that is rarely excelled by the people of any other part of the country. Even the so-called uneducated, through a varied experience, have devel- oped an insight into affairs and a knowledge of government, religion, and practical everyday things of life, that is not easily observable on first acquaintance. It is true, they are not prolific readers, on the whole, but what they read they meditate on, and in this way are more original thinkers than the average.
Bishop Wilbur R. Thirkield says of them: "The mountain people are of fine mental capacity. A man of affairs and a deep student of character once said of them: 'They need only an introduction to civil- ization to prove themselves equal to any men in the world. I regard them as the finest rough material in the world, and one of them molded into available shape is worth to the world a dozen ordinary people.'"
Dr. Harvey W. Wiley says: "These Highlanders are not degener- ates. On the contrary they are the best human specimens to be found in the country, and probably in the world. They are the last remnants of the undefiled."
Woodrow Wilson says: "In these mountains is the original stuff of which America was made."
The mountains have furnished some prominent men to the state and nation. Gen. T. T. Garrard, of Manchester, who met Zollicoffer at Wild- cat Mountain with his raw levies further distinguished himself during the Civil war and became one of the nation's great men. Samuel Miller, of Barbourville, became a justice of the United States Supreme Court. Green Adams, of Barbourville, was representative in Congress for four years and was appointed Sixth Auditor of the United States Treasury by President Lincoln. Silas Woodson, of Barbourville, became gover-
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nor of Missouri. Secretary of the Interior, Ballinger, in the Taft Cab- inet, was originally from Barbourville.
Lewis P. Summers, in speaking of the War of 1812, says: "Colonel James Campbell died in service at Mobile, Alabama, and Colonel John B. Campbell fell at the battle of Chippewa where he commanded the right wing of the army under General Winfield Scott. Both were sons of Colonel Arthur Campbell the 'father of his country.'" Col. Arthur Campbell himself died at his home, on the present site of Middlesboro, Kentucky, in the year 1811, and his body was buried at that place accord- ing to the direction of his will, which is recorded at the county clerk's office of this county. Mr. Haney says: "Recently the grave of Colonel Campbell was discovered in an out-of-the-way place" (in Middlesboro).
William O. Bradley, of Lancaster, governor of the state, and United States Senator at the time of his death, and the leading representative of the republican party in the state for three decades before his death, always boasted of his mountain ancestry and his love for the people of Eastern Kentucky.
D. G. Colson, of Middlesboro, was representative from the Eleventh Congressional District for a number of years and was colonel of the Fourth Kentucky Regiment during the Spanish-American war.
Judge T. J. Asher, of Pineville, for many years a resident of the little town of Wasiota, has been one of the foremost figures of Eastern Kentucky in developing its mineral resources, opening the rich coal mines of Harlan and Bell counties, and building railroads into the undeveloped regions. Judge Asher possessed a vision of the coming wealth of his part of the state that was seen by few of his contemporaries, and by rea- son of that vision he has become one of the wealthiest men in the Cum- berland Gap region.
James D. Black, of Barbourville, a prominent lawyer, was for a time governor of Kentucky.
The present governor of Kentucky, Edwin P. Morrow, of Somerset, has gained a national reputation as an orator and as a forceful execu- tive. He is a nephew of former Senator Bradley.
Says Ceeil J. Sharp, the English Folk-Lore writer: "The motin- taineer is freer in his manner, more alert, and less inarticulate than his British prototype. * * * The difference is seen in the way the moun- taineer. as I have already said, upon meeting a stranger, removes his hat, offers his hand and enters into conversation, where the English laborer would touch his cap, or pull his forelock, and pass on."
"They are, however, good talkers, using abundant vocabulary racily and often picturesquely. Although uneducated, in the sense in which that term is generally understood, they possess that elemental wisdom, abundant knowledge and intuitive understanding which those only who live in constant touch with nature and face to face with reality seem to be able to acquire."
"The reason * * why these mountain people * have acquired so many of the essentials of culture is partly to be attributed to the large amount of leisure they enjoy, without which, of course, no cultural development is possible, but chiefly to the fact that they have one and all entered at birth into the full enjoyment of their racial heri- tage. Their language, wisdom, manners, and the many graces of life that are theirs, are merely racial attributes which have been gradually acquired and accumulated in past centuries and handed down generation by generation, each generation adding its quotum to what it received."
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