USA > Tennessee > History of Tennessee the making of a state > Part 11
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After the establishment of Davidson County, the cur-
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rent of Middle Tennessee history grows broader and deeper, and its windings more intricate, though still ad- vancing steadily toward independent Statedom. It is an easy and interesting task to watch the gradual expansion of the original forts and observe the gradations from Nash- borough on the Cumberland to Nashville, the capital of Tennessee. It was not until some years later that the Cumberland settlement was drawn by the influence of Spanish intrigue and the impulse of the laws of trade into the intricacies of a wider channel of progress and action. Occasionally, however, there is a premonitory symptom, at times a diplomatic clash. When Robertson returned from North Carolina after the adjournment of the General Assembly, he found that already many of the old forts were being rebuilt, and as the population increased, new ones added. Isaac Bledsoe built a fort at Bledsoe's Lick. Anthony Bledsoe built one about two miles distant. Charles Morgan erected one on Bledsoe's Creek. The num- ber increased steadily, in spite of renewed Indian attacks, which fell at times like hurricanes of destruction upon the citizens of the county. The discovery of the weakness of the Continental Congress had dispelled the awe of the in- placable savage.
In 1784 the town of Nashville, named in honor of Colonel Nash, - like Davidson a revolutionary hero of North Carolina, - succeeded the station of Nashborough. Commissioners were appointed to survey the plat and lay off about two hundred acres of land on the Cumber- land Bluffs, near the French Lick, in lots each of one acre, with convenient streets, lanes, and alleys, four acres being reserved for public purposes. The condition of each deed to the lots was the making of certain improve- ments upon them within three years. The directors and trustees were Samuel Barton, Thomas Molloy. and James Shaw. The consideration, as recited in their deeds, was "four pounds lawful money and the proviso and condi-
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tion that the purchaser should build or finish within three years on the lot, one well-framed log, brick, or stone house, sixteen feet square at least, eight feet clear in the pitch."
In 1785 it was enacted by the General Assembly of North Carolina that " one judge shall be commissioned by His Excellency the Governor for the time being, first being elected by joint-ballot of the General Assembly for this purpose, to hold a Superior Court of Law and Equity in the said county, to be styled the Superior Court of Law and Equity for the County of Davidson, twice in each year in Nashville, to wit, on the first Monday of May and the first Monday of November annually, to be continued by adjournment for ten days, exclusive of Sun- days." The judge was allowed a salary of fifty pounds.1 The year following the General Assembly erected a new county, taken from Davidson, and gave it the name of Sumner.
An act was passed in 1786 for the protection of the inhabitants of Davidson and Sumner counties. It was directed that a military body of two hundred men be en- listed and formed for two years' term of service, under command of major, captain, lieutenant, ensign, and four sergeants, to be elected by the General Assembly. The justices of the peace were authorized and required to lay a tax payable in corn, pork, beef, or other species of provisions for the support of the troops. A proper out-
1 Haywood says "they appointed a young man of the age of twenty-four to be the judge of this court, who, upon mature re- flection becoming fearful that his small experience and stock of legal acquirements were inadequate to the performance of those great duties which the office devolved upon him, chose rather to resign than to risk the injustice to suitors, which others of better qualifica- tions might certainly avoid." This is a most improbable legend. Andrew Jackson, the young man in question, was born in 1767, and in 1785 was only eighteen years old. In addition to this, he was not admitted to the bar of Davidson County until 1789.
1 1 :
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fit of clothing was supplied by the State as a bounty and an offset against certain stipulated quantities of ammuni- tion to be supplied by the recruits themselves. "The officers and privates were allowed the same pay and rations (spirituous liquors excepted) as were allowed to the militia officers and privates in the service of the State." Not the least important duties performed by this corps were the opening a road from the lower end of Clinch Mountain to Nashville. The road is frequently men- tioned in the early records, and each year provisions for its improvement were made by North Carolina or Da- vidson County. The most important of the duties of the company were to conduct parties of emigrants to the middle settlements. This frequently induced those who arrived in East Tennessee on their way to Kentucky to change their point of destination and proceed to Nash- ville.1 The guard certificates which were issued in pay- ment of these services became a kind of currency. Each day saw the arrival of new settlers -the broadening of the limits of civilization. Vegetables were grown from seeds brought from the ports of Virginia and the Caro- linas, and even from Philadelphia. John Donelson, the year of his arrival, had planted cotton, and found that it grew exuberantly in soil well exposed to the rays of the sun. Corn always yielded an abundant harvest when the accidents of Indian warfare allowed it to be properly eul- tivated. A tobacco inspection was established in 1785. In this year also arrived the first physician, preceding by one year the arrival of the first lawyers, in Middle Tennes- see, namely, Edward Douglas and Thomas Molloy. These two rode the circuit of Davidson and Sumner counties
1 The fact that Andrew Jackson went to Nashville under such an escort throws some doubt upon Parton's owl story, especially in view of the fact that, according to this, the Indians allowed a party whom they had surrounded to deliberately pack, mount, and move off unmolested.
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until eventually Tennessee County was erected. It is one of the distinguishing features of American history that the schoolmaster goes hand in hand with the preacher and the dispensers of justice. In 1785 the legislature of North Carolina - or rather James Robertson who repre- sented Davidson County in the General Assembly of North Carolina - had passed an act appointing Rev. Thomas B. Craighead and others a body politic under the name of President and Trustees of Davidson Academy, and two hundred and forty acres were granted near Nash- ville for its support. From this origin has come the Nashville University. In this year, also, we find traces of another feature of American civilization more powerful, perhaps, than all the rest. An act was passed forbidding the distillation of spirituous liquors in Davidson County. Among the reasons assigned was the preservation of grain. Shortly after this, however, the first whiskey was distilled from raw corn, and soon the Red Heifer became one of the rallying points of the settlement. It stood upon the bluff near Spout Spring in Nashville. The Red Heifer was preceded but a few years by a corn mill and a " hominy pounder." These were run by water-power, and their invention, by a curious coincidence. originated in the brain of a man named Cartwright. Before this, hominy was made either by the hand pestle or by a so- called spring pole, worked generally by horse-power. The first application of water-power was a rude imitation of the application of hand-power. "A trough was made some twelve feet long and placed upon a pivot or balance, and was so dug out, that by letting the water run in at one end of the trough it would fill up so as to overcome the equipoise, when one end would descend and the water rushing out, the trough or log would return to its equilibrium, coming down at the other end with a con- siderable force, where a pestle or hammer was made to strike with foree sufficient to erack the grains of corn."
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This was naturally a tedious process. Cartwright " con- structed a wheel upon the rim of which he fastened a number of cows' horns in such a position that as cach horn was filled by water from the little stream, its weight turned the wheel so that the next horn presented its open mouth to receive its supply of water-weight and thus keep the wheel in constant revolution. To a crank was attached the apparatus for corn-cracking."1 Two men named Henderson and Wells have the honor of being the earliest millers of Middle Tennessee. They were soon surrounded by rival establishments. By the side of some of them stood frequently the immediate successors of the Red Heifer.
Another evidence of the growth of population was the establishment of a ferry across the Cumberland, above the mouth of Sulphur-Lick Branch. Another infant in- dustry which added to the comforts and increased the solidity of the settlements was the manufacture of salt. Up to 1789, all grants of land were expressly precluded from embracing any salt springs -commonly called licks. These were generally leased out to parties who were under contract to manufacture specified quantities. A part of the tax for the support of the guards was pay- able in salt. In 1789 the salt springs were ordered sold, except some reserved for public use, and those buying the licks were free to manufacture as much as they saw fit. Kettles had been brought from Jonesboro and furnaces erected as early as 1785-86. Among others engaged in this industry was the versatile Mountflorence, a French- man, who was noted for his thrift, his enterprise, and his politeness, and who was supposed to be in some mysteri- ous and not very tangible manner connected with the French government.
1 Putnam.
CHAPTER XVI.
TROUBLE WITH THE INDIANS.
BUT whilst the pursuits of agriculture and a small but slowly increasing trade were broadening and deepening the foundations of the future State, implacable hatred was still burning in the breasts of the ancient owners of the soil, and the rifle had not been allowed long to hang upon the gun-racks in the cabins. The treaty which Martin and Donelson, under commission from Virginia, had made with the Indians, and through which important cessions of territory were gained, had been disregarded by the United States under that custom of law which allows to sovereignty alone the right of despoiling the native tribes of America. But the same results had prac- tically been accomplished by the provisions of the treaty made at Hopewell the 28th of November, 1785, and the later treaty of January 10. The former was between the United States and the Cherokees ; the latter between the Chickasaws and the United States. The Hopewell Treaty had been received with outspoken disapproval by the Cumberland as well as the Watauga people. William Blount, then a member of Congress, declared against its ratification. Lands which the Sycamore Shoals Treaty of Henderson and the Treaty of Fort Stanwix had ob- tained from the Indians had been entered and settled. A great number of these settlers were declared by the Treaty of Hopewell to be upon Indian ground. Those who failed to move off were left to be punished by the Indians as they might think proper. They were allowed
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to arrest any person they might believe to have been guilty of a capital offense, and " punish them in the pres- ence of some of the Cherokees in the same manner as they would be punished for like offenses committed on citizens of the United States." The region of country left the Cumberland settlement was that between the Cumberland River and the boundary line of Kentucky. The Piomingo Treaty of January, 1786, gave the Chicka- saws all the country along the valleys of the Ohio and the Mississippi to the northern boundary of the Choctaws. The United States commissioners, in making these con- cessions, had been guided by a sincere desire to put an end to the bloody contests upon the frontier. They hoped to conciliate the Indians and to withdraw them from the influence which the whole frontier had now begun to appreciate - the malign influence of France and Spain. But they failed. Scarcely had the treaty been concluded, and before the recipients of the presents be- stowed had worn the tinsel from their ornaments, the old butchery again began. Peter Barrett was killed below where Clarksville now stands, within the limits which had been reserved for the Cumberland settlement by the late treaty. This was soon followed by other attacks until the reign of terror, which the settlers vainly hoped had been forever ended as a compensation for the indig- nities of the Treaty of Hopewell, was again restored. One of the most determined opponents of that treaty had been James Robertson, and he inveighed bitterly against the parsimony of the mother State, which threw upon the infant settlement the burden of bearing its own expenses for self-defense and the exigencies of frontier life. As a representative from Davidson County, Robertson, in con- nection with Bledsoe and William Blount, an avowed friend of the Western people, had in 1786 drawn up a memorial to the General Assembly, in which he set forth in forcible and indignant language the condition of the
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Cumberland settlement. . He reviewed the persistent cruelty of the Indians, the number they had massacred, their threatened vengeance, and the danger undergone by those who had ventured into the wilderness and made it yield a revenue to the coffers of the State. . He alluded in feeling terms to the treaty between Spain and the United States, which threatened to cut them off from all market for their produce, and the added mortification of seeing the Indians rendered more hostile by the influence of Spain itself. .. We call upon the humanity and justice of the State to prevent any further massacres and depre- dations of ourselves and our constituents, and we claim from the legislature that protection of life and property which is due to every citizen, and recommend as the most safe and convenient means of relief, the adoption of the resolves of Congress of the 26th October last for the ces- sion of western lands to the United States." But it was the policy of North Carolina, founded upon the dictates of self-interest, to make no outlay upon a province which in the natural course of human events would soon be beyond her control. All acts passed this session required the expenditures for the Cumberland settlement to be col- lected from the Cumberland people. When Robertson returned to Nashborough he found the condition of the people almost as desperate as at any time since the Bat- tle of the Bluffs. In a few weeks after his return his brother, Mark Robertson, was killed. Filled with grief and resentment, he resolved to strike one blow that would for a time at least put an end to the daily atrocities which embittered and endangered the lives of his people. His suspicions fell upon the Indians living near the Musele Shoals, at a place where a deep spring of cold clear water gushed forth from the hidden recesses of the earth, - now the pleasant and sleepy little town of Tuscumbia in Ala- bama. Not knowing the intricacies of the forests, his embarrassment was relieved by the offer of the services of
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Toka, a friendly Chickasaw, and a friend of Toka. Hav- ing made due preparation, he marched out from the sta- tion with a well-trained band of one hundred and twenty men. Another party was to go by water down the Cum- berland and up the Tennessee to Colbert's Ferry, a cross- ing place used by the Indians. with provisions, under the command of David Hay. Pushing rapidly across the country and through the cane-brakes that stood densely upon the lower banks of the Cumberland, Robertson arrived upon the banks of the Tennessee River and con- cealed his men until a favorable time for crossing should arrive. Finding a large canoe upon the opposite shore, a question arose as to who should swim the river to bring it back. During the discussion a plunge was heard, and Edmond Jennings, the brave and fearless son of the unfortunate Jonathan Jennings, was in the water and hidden by the darkness. Joshua Thomas, his inseparable companion, immediately followed. They soon returned with a canoe capable of carrying forty men. After some mishaps Robertson finally arrived upon the other bank with all his company. Marching towards the town, he ordered his men to preserve the strictest silence. Toka had predicted that as soon as the Indians saw them they would run to their boats at the mouth of the creek that emptied into the river some distance above the town. Robertson sent Rains to intercept them with a small body of men. Having made his preparations, the word was given, and the little band rushed into the village. The Indians were already in full retreat toward their boats, but they lost in all thirty lives. The village was destroyed, and Robertson left, taking with him a large quantity of merchandise belonging to French traders whom he had captured whilst trying to escape with the Indians. The prisoners were released and the men returned to Cum- berland, without the loss of a life, laden with the spoils of the French traders. This is known as the Toka, or
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Cold Water expedition. . The party under Hay met with less success. It had one man killed and three wounded. Coming almost immediately upon the heels of the Hope- well Treaty, the Toka expedition created a profound sen- sation throughout the Southwest, and Robertson felt called on to write a justification of his course for the satisfaction of the French at Illinois. The best justification was found in a fact which he judiciously failed to mention, that the depredations were stopped, though only for a few weeks.
Robertson immediately wrote a communication to the Indians by a trader named Perrault, expressing his desire to be at peace with them and offering terms of amity. Their reply was an armed body of two hundred braves, who, separated into bands of from three to five, restored in tenfold degree the horrors of the earlier days of the settlement. Robertson hastened the formation of the battalion designed for the protection of Davidson County, and placed it under the command of Captain Evans. But it was discovered that the regularly organized troops, many of them newly arrived emigrants and recruits from the eastern settlements, were inadequate to perform the duties expected of them. They were not equal to the emergencies of Indian warfare and were therefore as- signed to guard duty to escort incoming emigrants across the country over the Clinch and Nashville road. The men who were called on to meet the Indians were those who had learned the lesson of experience. John Rains and Castleman. Edmond Jennings and Josh Thomas were worth a hundred dragoons.
John Rains was given command of troops raised in the Cumberland country and made at different times three expeditions against the Indians, each of which overawed them, though only temporarily. The entire male popula- tion of the western settlement were in arms and scoured the forests in all directions. But the only good result was to drive the Indians back to their villages. The evil was
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merely checked for a short time. The depredations of the Indians continuing, Robertson again made ready to apply the corrective which the stern example of John Sevier had demonstrated to be alone efficacious. 1Ie in- vaded their country. But being met by a messenger who brought assurance of friendship, and promises to refrain from further molestation, and perhaps being also appre- hensive of further complication with the Spanish, whose traders he was likely to meet, he returned without striking a blow. But upon a renewal of hostilities, Robertson and Bledsoe visited Kentucky and made arrangements for a joint invasion of the country of the Creeks. Not content with invoking the aid of Kentucky, Robertson wrote an urgent letter to John Sevier. Anthony Bledsoe also wrote to "his excellency," suggesting the destruction of the Chickamauga towns as the only hope of immunity, and stating that an organized body of a thousand Creeks was reported to be on the way to the Cumberland settlement.
But Sevier was at this time no longer governor. The State of Franklin had been merged in the State of North Carolina. Nothing daunted, however, Sevier headed an expedition against the common enemy and created a diver- sion which prevented the threatened invasion. The last days of North Carolina's rule in Tennessee were full of mis- ery for the people on the border. The Indians, both in the east and in the west, kept up the old system of hostili- ties, surprises, and massacres. The intrigues of Spain added strength and persistency to their malignancy. There was nothing to hope for from the parent State. The set- tlements had grown in strength and were now become res- tive under her niggardly neglect and chafed at the bonds which held them. The State, it is true, made no attempts to derive revenue from the new settlements, but she was also equally particular to allow none of the charges of their support or protection to fall upon herself. Reerim- inations ensued and bitterness of feeling. North Carolina
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accused the frontier people of bad faith in making out their accounts. In turn the mother State was accused of viewing with cold-blooded indifference the mutilations and assassinations of her own children. The immediate pros- pects of separation alone prevented the Cumberland peo- ple from imitating the example of the Watauga and Nollichucky revolutionists. Separation was equally de- sired by those who lived on the shores of the Atlantic and in the valleys beyond the Appalachian Mountains.
CHAPTER XVII.
TERRITORY AND NICKOJACK EXPEDITION.
THE immediate cause of separation was the example of the other States and the prospects held out of relief from debt. One of the leading ideas upon which the new gov- ernment was founded was the assumption and payment in full by the federal government of the unpaid state debts, incurred by them during the war for independence. North Carolina, which previously refused to enter the Union, had in November, 1789, finally ratified the con- stitution and become a member of the new government. The act of cession was passed in December of the same year, and ceded to the United States, the strong and healthy successor of the feeble and inefficient Continental Congress, " all right, title, and claim which this State has to the sovereignty and territory of the lands situated within the chartered limits of the State," west of a line which is now the eastern boundary of Tennessee.
One condition of this cession was that all land so ceded should be considered as a common fund for the use and benefit of the United States of America, North Carolina inclusive. Certain rights of entry were reserved and provision made for the non-acceptance of the cession. One of the most important conditions was one which in the light of subsequent events was pregnant with sinis- ter meaning : " No regulations made or to be made by Congress shall tend to emancipate slaves." It was also provided that the territory so ceded should be laid out or formed into a State or States, the inhabitants of which
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were to enjoy all the privileges, benefits, and advantages granted by the late Congress for the government of the Western Territory of the United States. On the 9th of January, 1790, Hamilton, the ablest and most brilliant of the members of the first American cabinet, brought for- ward his report on the settlement of the public debt. One of the measures advocated was the assumption of the state debts by the general government. Alarmed and excited by the rapid strides towards what they regarded despotic centralization, the anti-federalists put forth their whole strength to defeat this recommendation. It was only carried by a vote of 31 to 26, but before it had received the concurrence of the Senate, seven members arrived from North Carolina. Surrounded by friends who were eager to defeat the measures of their opponents, and perhaps persuaded that the relief from debt when so accomplished was more dangerous than the burden of the debt itself, they voted to reconsider the bill. The minority of five had now become a majority of two and the measure was defeated. Indignant at the short-sightedness which ham- pered the broad results of his statesmanship, and unseru- pulous in the use of political forces involving no moral turpitude, Hamilton purchased the votes of the two anti- federalists from the Potomac by fixing the final site of the national capital on its banks, and thus carried trium- rhantly through the measures which his mature insight recognized as alone possible to place the financial policy of the young government upon a firm basis. On the 25th of February, 1790, Samnel Johnston and Benjamin Haw- kins, United States senators from North Carolina, signed the deed of cession, which made Tennessee, as yet un- named, a Territory of the United States. The act of acceptance was approved April 2, 1790, and on May 26, 1790, was passed "an aet for the government of the Territory of the United States, south of the river Ohio."
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