USA > Tennessee > Davidson County > Nashville > History of Nashville, Tenn. > Part 10
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CHAPTER VII.
NASHVILLE FROM 1796 TO 1843.
Containing a History of the Growth of Nashville from 1796 to 1843, When the City Became the Permanent Capital of the State.
TN the last chapter we have given an account of the settlement and growth of Nashville from its foundation on the bluff near the French Lick from 1780 to 1796, the date of the admission of Tennessee into the Union as a State. In this chapter we shall continue to trace the growth and development of the town from that period until 1843, when Nashville became the permanent capital of the State.
We shall not attempt to give more than an outline of this history in this chapter, leaving the subjects of transportation, education, manufactures, churches, courts and lawyers, physicians, clergymen, and other topics to be more fully treated in the chapters specially devoted to them.
It may not be uninteresting to see how our frontier town and people appeared to a distinguished foreigner in 1797. In that year Nashville was visited by Francis Bailey, a cultivated young Englishman, who after- ward became a celebrated astronomer and the founder and first Presi- dent of the Royal Astronomical Society of England. This adventurous young man went from New Orleans to New York overland, coming from Natchez to Nashville and proceeding from here on horseback to Knox- ville, and from there on to New York. Some of his party crossed the Tennessee River by swimming their horses; but others, not being used to this hazardous mode of getting across large streams, constructed a raft. Attempting to cross on this raft, our future astronomer and those of the party with him came near being drowned. Having lost control of their ill-constructed craft, they drifted down the stream and were separated from their friends, who had gone over on their horses. Bailey and the party on the raft were finally rescued by some friendly Indians, who in their canoes came to their assistance .. Put on the eastern shore of the Tennessee, they were then sixty or seventy miles from Nashville. It took them seven days to make their way through the unbroken wilder- ness. Not a white man did they meet with, nor any sign of settlement until within twelve miles of Nashville. During this sad tramp of seven days they came near starving, from lack of food and the means of pro- curing any. But on the seventh day about eleven o'clock, Mr. Bailey tells us, " the path began to widen and to assume the mark of being
3
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much frequented. Soon after we observed evident tracks of cows and other animals, which plainly indicated to us that a settlement was near at hand; and to our great happiness and comfort we descried the first civilized habitation since our leaving Natchez. Nothing could exceed our joy on this occasion. We jumped, hallooed, and appeared as elated as if we had succeeded to the greatest estate imaginable. It was not long ere we approached the door of this auspicious mansion; but we met with a repulse which at first diminished somewhat the pleasure with which we were before transported.
"An old woman came to the door and told us that the settlement was but just formed, and that therefore she could afford us no shelter or provisions; but that there was another well-established plantation about a mile and a half farther on where we might meet with refreshments, etc. This latter sentence revived us again, and we once more pursued our journey to the desired spot. We soon approached it, and entering the yard, saw the horses of our late companions ranging about in a field near the house. This was an agreeable sight to us, as it was one trouble off our minds; and it was not long ere they themselves came out to meet us and congratulate us on our entry into civilized life. We were not far behind them, for they had arrived there only this morning, and had im- mediately ordered something to be got ready for a meal.
"This plantation belongs to a Mr. Joslin; it is situated about six or seven miles from Nashville, and is one of the last settlements on the path toward the wilderness. It has been formed about seven or eight years, and consisted of several acres of land tolerably well cultivated, some in corn, some in meadow, and others in grain, etc. His house was formed of logs, built so as to command a view of the whole plantation, and con- sisted of only two rooms, one of which served for all the purposes of life, and the other to hold lumber," etc.
Our Londoner, after devouring with extra relish a meal of pork and beans, continued on his way to Nashville, and as he approached the town he found houses and plantations more and more frequent. But let him tell his own tale: "We even met, within three or four miles of the town, two coaches fitted up in all the style of Philadelphia or New York, be- sides other carriages, which plainly indicated that a spirit of refinement and luxury had made its way into this settlement. As we approached the town the plantations on either side of the road began to assume a more civilized appearance, yet still not such as one observes in the neigh- borhood of large towns and cities. It was near seven o'clock when we reached Nashville. The sight of it gave us great pleasure, as after so long an absence from any compact society of this kind, we viewed
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the several buildings with a degree of satisfaction and additional beauty which none can conceive but those who have undergone the same cir- cumstances. We inquired for the best tavern in the place; and having ascertained where it lay, we hastened to it; and giving our horses to the hostler, entered the house and sat down, completely happy in having per- formed this laborious and troublesome journey.
"We had still, however, another wilderness to go through ere we arrived at the settled parts of the United States; but as this town was a kind of resting-place for us, we did not look forward to any further diffi- culties and dangers, but considered our journey as at an end. In fact, the principal part of it was, for now I had not much more than a thou- sand miles farther to go; but this I had to go by myself, as my companion left me at this place in order to proceed to Kentucky, whereas my route lay through Knoxville, on the Holston River.
"Next day, August Ist, I went round to view the town. Found it pleasantly situated on the south-west bank of the Cumberland River and elevated above its bed about eighty to one hundred feet. The river here is about two hundred yards wide. The country all around consists of a layer of fine black mold on a bed of limestone, which in many places projects through the surface, and shows itself in dark-gray protuber- ances. In 1780 a small colony, under the direction of James Robert- son, crossed the mountains and settled at this place, but it was not until within these few years that it could be called a place of any importance.
" The town contains about sixty or eighty families; the houses, which are chiefly of logs and frame, stand scattered over the whole site of the town, so that it appears larger than it actually is. The inhabitants, like all those in the newly settled towns, are chiefly concerned in some way of business. A store-keeper is the general denomination for such persons, and under this head you may include every one who buys or sells. There are two or three taverns in this place, but the principal one is kept by Major Lewis. There we met with good fare, but very poor accommoda- tions for lodgings: three or four beds of the roughest construction in one room, which was open at all hours of the night for the reception of any rude rabble that had a mind to put up at the house; and if the other beds happen to be occupied, you might be surprised in the morning to find a bedfellow by your side whom you had never seen before and per- haps might never see again. All complaint is unnecessary, for you are immediately silenced by that all-powerful argument, the custom of the country and an inability to remedy it; or, perhaps, your landlord may tell you that if you do not like it, you are at liberty to depart as soon as you please. Having long been taught to put up with inconveniences, I
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determined for the future to take things as I found them, and if I could not remedy them, to be content. Besides, I did not feel the ill effects of the rough accommodation so much as other persons might in traveling from a more civilized part of the world, because every thing that was be- yond a piece of bread and bacon and the cold, hard ground appeared to me as a luxury.
"I know no other particulars of this place, except that it is the princi- pal town in this western division of the State, and that the country about it is pretty well settled, considering the time since its first establishment. What other particulars you may wish to know of this new State you may learn in Morse or Imlay. There are several other little towns in the neighborhood; in fact, the banks of the Cumberland River on both sides are well cultivated for a considerable distance. Major Nelson, who boarded with me at Major Lewis's, is forwarding a settlement and laying off a town at the head of Harper's Creek, about twenty-five miles off, where he sells his half-acre town lots for $10 and his out lots of ten acres for $30, on the condition that improvements are to be made and a house built within two years. The price of land about the vicinity of this place, unimproved, is from $1 to $4 and $5, according to its situation and neighborhood."
We are sorry that we cannot accompany so candid and observant a traveler on his solitary journey through the Cumberland Mountains to Knoxville.
In reading the foregoing extract the reader will be struck with the fact that, though living mostly in log houses, the people in and around Nashville in 1797 had good carriages and many of the comforts of more populous sections of the country. He will also be struck with the preva- lence of military titles. Nashville, a place of two hundred and fifty or three hundred people, seems to have consisted largely of majors. It re- calls Max O'Rell's opening remark about the United States of our day: "Sixty millions of people, mostly colonels." And in 1797 people in Nashville were engaged in laying out adjoining towns and booming town lots, as their descendants are now.
Had Mr. Bailey arrived a few months earlier in this same year, 1797, in the month of May, he might have had as fellow-guests at Major Lew- is's tavern, or perchance even bedfellows, the three exiled sons of the Duke of Orleans, the eldest of whom afterward was king of France. Louis Philippe and his brothers were in Nashville on their way to New Orleans. The old French frontiersman, Mon Brun (Demonbreun), was here then, and continued to reside in Nashville until after the visit of the Marquis de Lafayette in 1825. The old Frenchman's soul was
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HISTORY OF NASHVILLE.
delighted with seeing and talking to these distinguished fellow-country- men in his native language. The sons of the Duke of Orleans left Nashville in a canoe, going down the Cumberland. After Louis Phi- lippe was king of France he often referred to his visit to Nashville, and laughed at having had to occupy the same bed with a fellow-guest, a stranger to him. But, less than a hundred years afterward, Nashville can now offer to visitors at her Maxwell House, Duncan Hotel, and Nich- olson House all the refined and elegant accommodations to be had in Paris or New York.
In the year 1801 Nashville, which before that had been in the control of a body of commissioners provided for by the act of North Carolina in 1784, and whose number was increased by the act of the Tennessee Legislature of 1796, was now made a quasi-corporation. The act of 1801 provided for the election of seven commissioners, each of whom was to be a citizen of the town and the proprietor of a town lot; and those seven commissioners were required to select one of their number to preside over their body, who was to be called "Intendant."
In 1806 the town was granted a charter, and it was formally incorpo- rated under the name and style of "Mayor and Aldermen of the town of Nashville." There were to be six Aldermen and a Mayor. Joseph Coleman was elected the first Mayor. The right to vote in munici- pal elections was confined to property-holders in the town, and it may be that under this qualification women who were heads of families and owners of lots as widows and unmarried females, voted. In the town of Knoxville, whose charter provided that all persons owners of lots in the town might vote in municipal elections, the writer knows that women who owned lots were voters. The writer thinks that this should be the law as to all municipal elections, and that only property-holders and tax- payers should vote, and that sex should not be regarded. This is the present law in England, and it is to the credit of our law-makers of the beginning of the century that they were so far ahead of the times in this regard.
In the year 1803 the Legislature of Tennessee, without the concur- rence or request of the trustees of Davidson Academy, undertook by act passed that year to convert Davidson Academy into Davidson Col- lege, and to appoint a new set of trustees for this college. This is what the Legislature of New Hampshire, in substance, afterward attempted to do in regard to Dartmouth College, and which, after the eloquent resist- ance of Daniel Webster, led to the celebrated decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, declaring such attempts of Legislatures to violate the contractual sanctity of corporate power to be null and void.
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NASHVILLE FROM 1796 TO 1843.
It is certainly very remarkable that the trustees of Davidson Academy, in 1804, anticipated this Dartmouth College case, decided in 1819.
The following proceedings appear on the minutes of the trustees of Davidson Academy under date of January 19, 1804: "On the question, ' Will the trustees proceed to business under the late law of the State of Tennessee entitled "An Act to Amend an Act to Establish a College and Incorporate the Trustees thereof in Davidson County"?' it was carried unanimously, after mature deliberation and taking the opinion of counsel learned in the law, in the negative."
This spirited action of the Davidson Academy trustees led the Leg- islature at its next session to surrender this assumption of power and to repeal the act seeking to create Davidson College. So there never was a Davidson College, and most of our historians have fallen into the , error of saying Davidson Academy became Davidson College, and that in 1806 Davidson College became Cumberland College. In 1806, at the request and petition of the trustees of Davidson Academy, the Legisla- ture accepted the surrender of their charter and property rights, and then created Cumberland College and transferred to it the property formerly belonging to the trustees of Davidson Academy. Overlooking the fact of the surrender by Davidson Academy of its corporate existence and rights, for nearly eighty years afterward the two hundred and forty acres of land originally given by North Carolina to Davidson Academy with exemption from taxation, although these lands had been sold and no longer belonged either to the Academy or College, were treated as still free from taxation. The decision of the Supreme Court of Tennessee in 1839, recognizing the exemption of these lands from taxation, appears upon the face of the opinion of the very able judge who delivered the opinion in that case to be grounded upon the erroneous assumption that Davidson Academy became Cumberland College. Continuity of exist- ence is assumed, and the act of voluntary suicide by the Academy does not appear to have been taken into consideration by the court. This part of Nashville was called "free territory," and thus much is said about it to explain how it happened to be called so and how for so long it was treated as exempt from the burdens of taxation.
In 1805 Aaron Burr, who had ceased to be Vice-president of the Unit- ed States, visited Nashville, and was given a public dinner and greatly feted and caressed by every one. He was the guest of General Jackson. He returned again the same year, and was still received with distinguished honor by our citizens, and was still the guest of General Jackson: but, subsequently, when his schemes with regard to the South-west and Mex- ico began to develop, he became universally odious, and was burned in 7
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effigy by the citizens, in the fall of 1806, on the public square. General Andrew Jackson, who was major-general of the militia of Tennessee, had no suspicion of Burr's schemes, and had treated him as a distinguished guest and friend. But when his suspicions became excited that Burr's purposes might be unpatriotic and treasonable, he immediately wrote to Governor Claiborne, of Louisiana, putting him on his guard, saying: " Be on the alert; your government, I fear, is in danger. I fear there are plans on foot inimical to the Union." General Jackson also wrote to President Jefferson a similar letter, and offered to raise three regiments ready to take the field in twenty days. President Jefferson sent his an- swer to General Jackson by special messenger, ordering him to hold his command in readiness to march when called on. During the panic and excitement growing out of the Burr business the revolutionary veterans in Nashville, all of whom were over military age, organized themselves into a company, and made General James Robertson their captain. They called themselves the "Invincible Grays." In a letter they tendered their services to fight for the Union, if needed. General Jackson was greatly touched by the action of these old patriots, and in his answer to their communication said: "When the insolence or vanity of the Spanish Government shall dare to repeat their insults on our flag, or shall dare to violate the sacred obligations of the good faith of treaties, or should the disorganizing traitor attempt the dismemberment of our country or crim- inal breach of our laws, let me ask what will be the effect of the example given by a tender of service made by such men as compose the ‘ Invin- cible Grays,' commanded, too, by the father of our infant State, General James Robertson ? "
But subsequently General Jackson became convinced that Burr had been grossly misrepresented, and that it was a political persecution by Jefferson. General Jackson went all the way to Richmond, Va., to be a witness in the Burr trial before Chief-justice Marshall; and, as Jackson never espoused any man's cause in a half-hearted way, he did not hesi- tate, in a public address on the Capitol Square in Richmond, to vindicate Burr and to angrily denounce Mr. Jefferson as his persecutor. Colonel Burr ever remained a great admirer of Andrew Jackson, and was one of the first persons afterward to urge his fitness for the Presidency of the United States, as the successor of Mr. Monroe.
The writer does not deem it proper or necessary to detail the particu- lars of General Jackson's unfortunate duel with Dickinson, or the fight at the Inn with the Bentons. Suffice it to say that duelling was one of the fashions of that time, and has not ceased even as yet, in such old countries as France and Germany, to be resorted to for the settlement of
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personal difficulties among men. Fortunately for Tennessee, public sen- timent on the subject of duelling had undergone such a change that in 1834 the Constitution of the State disfranchised those thereafter guilty of this practice, and the Legislature made it a felony. But perhaps it may be interesting to note that the personal difficulty between Governor Se- vier and General Jackson eventuated in a race between them for the po- sition of major-general of the Tennessee militia. This office was in the gift of the military officers of the State. Sevier and Jackson each re- ceived the same number of votes, and the determination of the question between them devolved upon Governor Roane, as ex officio commander in chief of the State militia. He gave his vote for Jackson, and thus opened the way to him for his brilliant military career, terminating in the victory of New Orleans, which directly led to the Presidency of the United States. This vote of Roane's relegated Sevier to civil life. He was afterward governor and Congressman. Had the casting vote been for Sevier, Jack- son would have perhaps remained farmer and merchant. How different would have been the history of the United States! How much often de- pends upon a single vote !
In 1810 Nashville had a population of some 1, 100.
In 1812 the Legislature of the State of Tennessee met in Nashville for the first time, having before that sat at Knoxville. But, after continuing in Nashville until the end of the war with England of 1812-15, it returned again to Knoxville in 1816, and in 1819 assembled in the town of Mur- freesboro, and continued to do so until 1826, when it removed to Nash- ville, where it has met ever since.
In 1807 Felix Grundy, who was chief-justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky, removed to Nashville. To the day of his death, in 1840, he continued to be regarded as the ablest criminal lawyer in the Mississippi Valley. In 1811 he represented the Nashville District in Congress, where he and Henry Clay were the leaders of the war party, and to whom is largely due the credit of vindicating the national honor by that second war of independence.
That thousands of volunteers assembled at Nashville, and, under Jack- son, went forth to fight gloriously for their country until the crowning victory of 1815, at New Orleans, on January 8, needs not to be told here. The history of the nation is full of it.
General James Robertson, the founder of Nashville, died, universally mourned, September 1, 1814. He was at that time United States Agent to the Chickasaw Indians, and died away from home, at the post of duty, at the agency. His remains were buried at the agency, and continued there until 1825, when they were removed to Nashville and re-interred in
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the city cemetery on the south of the city. The citizens turned out en masse to do him honor, and the funeral oration was delivered by Judge John Haywood, of the Supreme Court. The following simple inscription was placed on his tombstone:
GEN'L JAMES ROBERTSON, THE FOUNDER OF NASHVILLE, WAS BORN IN VIRGINIA, 28TH JUNE, 1742; DIED IST SEP'T., 1814.
It is somewhat remarkable that the two great leaders and founders of Tennessee (James Robertson and John Sevier) should both have died in less than a year of each other -both from home, both com- to treat with Indians, the one other with the Creeks ; that each and suffered to lie there for the one to Nashville and the vier died June 24, 1815. It has no monument to the honor of in Tennessee. Indeed, in most The writer confesses that he la- ous impression until he was re- SEVIER. ley, the veteran mail-carrier, ory of John Sevier existed in (Mr. Buckley), many years worked upon it himself. So etery, and was delighted, after come across a very nice wishing to do so may is on the road leading gate, about one hun- missioners of the United States with the Chickasaws and the should be buried at his agency years, until finally removed, other to Knoxville. John Se- generally been assumed that Sevier has ever been erected of our histories it is so stated. bored under the same errone- cently told by Mr. Jerry Buck- that a monument to the mem- our old city cemetery ; for he since, had as a rock-mason the writer went out to the cem- some search for it, to marble shaft. Any one find this monument. It west from the front C.P.MURPHY. dred yards from the gate. It has on its sides the following inscription :
SEVIER, NOBLE AND SUCCESSFUL DEFENDER OF THE EARLY SETTLERS OF TENNESSEE. THE FIRST AND FOR TWELVE YEARS GOVERNOR, REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS, COMMISSIONER IN MANY TREATIES WITH THE INDIANS, HE SERVED HIS COUNTRY FORTY YEARS FAITHFULLY AND USEFULLY, AND IN THAT SERVICE DIED.
AN ADMIRER OF PATRIOTISM AND MERIT, UNREQUITED, ERECTS THIS.
Over the inscription is a wreath and crossed swords, beneath which are an Indian tomahawk and a bunch of Indian arrows. It is about fifteen feet high, and we give a picture of it on this page.
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The writer now feels authorized to state to whose good taste the public of Tennessee is indebted for this, the only stone erected to one who has rightly been called "the builder of the Commonwealth."
Mr. Buckley authorizes me to say that the anonymous admirer of that great hero, and who, at the expense of many hundreds of dollars out of his own pocket, erected this monument to John Sevier and procured the lot on which it stands, was the first President of the Tennessee Historical Society, the distinguished annalist of Middle Tennessee, Mr. A. W. Put- nam, himself a descendant of that great revolutionary hero, General Is- rael Putnam. All honor to Mr. Putnam, and the more shame to Tennes- see, that no monument has to this day been erected by it to its founder, deliverer, and hero !
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