Judge Henderson's comprehensive plans for the promotion of an extensive colonization of the Cumberland region soon began to take form in vigorous action. Just as in his Transylvania project Henderson had chosen Daniel Boone, the ablest of the North Carolina pioneers, to spy out the land and select sites for future location, so now he chose as leader of the new colonizing party the ablest of the Tennessee pioneers, James Robertson. Although he was the acknowledged leader of the Watauga settlement and held the responsible position of Indian agent for North Carolina, Robertson was induced by Henderson's liberal offers to leave his comparatively peaceful home and to venture his life in this desperate hazard of new fortunes. The advance party of eight white men and one negro, under Robertson's leadership, set forth from the Holston settlement on February 6, 1779, to make a preliminary exploration and to plant corn "that bread might be prepared for the main body of emigrants in the fall." After erecting a few cabins for dwellings and posts of defense, Robertson plunged alone into the wilderness and made the long journey to Post St. Vincent in the Illinois, in order to consult with George Rogers Clark, who had entered for himself in the Virginia Land Office several thousand acres of land at the French Lick. After perfecting arrangements with Clark for securing "cabin rights" should the land prove to lie in Virginia, Robertson returned to Watauga to take command of the migration.
Toward the end of the year two parties set out, one by land, the other by water, for the wonderful new country on the Cumberland of which Boone and Scaggs and Mansker had brought back such glowing descriptions. During the autumn Judge Henderson and other commissioners from North Carolina, in conjunction with commissioners from Virginia, had been running out the boundary line between the two states. On the very day—Christmas, 1779—that Judge Henderson reached the site of the Transylvania Fort, now called Boonesborough, the swarm of colonists from the parent hive at Watauga, under Robertson's leadership, reached the French Lick; and on New Year's Day, 1780, crossed the river on the ice to the present site of Nashville.
The journal of the other party, which, as has been aptly said, reads like a chapter from one of Captain Mayne Reid's fascinating novels of adventure, was written by Colonel John Donelson, the father-in-law of Andrew Jackson. Setting out from Fort Patrick Henry on Holston River, December 22, 1779, with a flotilla consisting of about thirty flatboats, dugouts, and canoes, they encountered few difficulties until they began to run the gauntlet of the Chickamauga towns on the Tennessee. Here they were furiously attacked by the Indians, terrible in their red and black war-paint; and a well-filled boat lagging in the rear, with smallpox on board, was driven to shore by the Indians. The occupants were massacred; but the Indians at once contracted the disease and died by the hundreds. This luckless sacrifice of "poor Stuart, his family and friends," while a ghastly price to pay, undoubtedly procured for the Cumberland settlements comparative immunity from Indian forays until the new-comers had firmly established themselves in their wilderness stronghold. Eloquent of the granite endurance and courageous spirit of the typical American pioneer in its thankfulness for sanctuary, for reunion of families and friends, and for the humble shelter of a log cabin, is the last entry in Donelson's diary (April 24, 1780):
This day we arrived at our journey's end at the Big Salt Lick, where we have the pleasure of finding Capt. Robertson and his company. It is a source of satisfaction to us to be enabled to restore to him and others their families and friends, who were intrusted to our care, and who, some time since, perhaps, despaired of ever meeting again. Though our prospects at present are dreary, we have found a few log cabins which have been built on a cedar bluff above the Lick by Capt. Robertson and his company. [193]
In the midst of the famine during this terrible period of the "hard winter," Judge Henderson was sorely concerned for the fate of the new colony which he had projected, and immediately proceeded to purchase at huge cost a large stock of corn. On March 5, 1780, this corn, which had been raised by Captain Nathaniel Hart, was "sent from Boonesborough in perogues [pettiaugers or flatboats] under the command of William Bailey Smith.… This corn was taken down the Kentucky River, and over the Falls of Ohio, to the mouth of the Cumberland, and thence up that river to the fort at the French Lick. It is believed have been the only bread which the settlers had until it was raised there in 1781." [194] There is genuine impressiveness in this heroic triumphing over the obstacles of obdurate nature and this paternalistic provision for the exposed Cumberland settlement—the purchase by Judge Henderson, the shipment by Captain Hart, and the transportation by Colonel Smith, in an awful winter of bitter cold and obstructed navigation, of this indispensable quantity of corn purchased for sixty thousand dollars in depreciated currency.
Upon his arrival at the French Lick, shortly after the middle of April, Judge Henderson at once proceeded to organize a government for the little community. On May 1st articles of association were drawn up; and important additions thereto were made on May 13th, when the settlers signed the complete series. The original document, still preserved, was drafted by Judge Henderson, being written throughout in his own handwriting; and his name heads the list of two hundred and fifty and more signatures. [195] The "Cumberland Compact," as this paper is called, is fundamentally a mutual contract between the copartners of the Transylvania Company and the settlers upon the lands claimed by the company. It represents the collective will of the community; and on account of the careful provisions safeguarding the rights of each party to the contract it may be called a bill of rights. The organization of this pure democracy was sound and admirable—another notable early example of the commission form of government. The most remarkable feature of this backwoods constitution marks Judge Henderson as a pioneer in the use of the political device so prominent to-day, one hundred and forty years later—the "recall of judges." In the following striking clause this innovation in government was recognized thus early in American history as the most effective means of securing and safeguarding justice in a democracy:
As often as the people in general are dissatisfied with the doings of the Judges or Triers so to be chosen, they may call a new election in any of the said stations, and elect others in their stead, having due respect to the number now agreed to be elected at each station, which persons so to be chosen shall have the same power with those in whose room or place they shall or may be chosen to act.
A land-office was now opened, the entry-taker being appointed by Judge Henderson, in accordance with the compact; and the lands, for costs of entry, etc., were registered for the nominal fee of ten dollars per thousand acres. But as the Transylvania Company was never able to secure a "satisfactory and indisputable title," the clause resulted in perpetual nonpayment. In 1783, following the lead of Virginia in the case of Transylvania, North Carolina declared the Transylvania Company's purchase void, but granted the company in compensation a tract of one hundred and ninety thousand acres in Powell's Valley. [196] As compensation, the grants of North Carolina and Virginia were quite inadequate, considering the value of the service in behalf of permanent western colonization rendered by the Transylvania company. [197]
James Robertson was chosen as presiding officer of the court of twelve commissioners, and was also elected commander-in-chief of the military forces of the eight little associated settlements on the Cumberland. Here for the next two years the self-reliant settlers under Robertson's wise and able leadership successfully repelled the Indians in their guerrilla warfare, firmly entrenched themselves in their forest-girt stronghold, and vindicated their claim to the territory by right of occupation and conquest. Here sprang up in later times a great and populous city—named, strangely enough, neither for Henderson, the founder, nor for Robertson and Donelson, the leaders of the two colonizing parties, but for one having no association with its history or origins, the gallant North Carolinian, General Francis Nash, who was killed at the Battle of Germantown.