That Spotswood's fears were well founded, we have already seen. As the sectaries of the back country increased, dissatisfaction with the established church grew. After the Revolution came, Jefferson, with the back country behind him, was able finally to destroy the establishment, and to break down the system of entails and primogeniture behind which the tobacco-planting aristocracy of the coast was entrenched. The desire of Jefferson to see slavery gradually abolished and popular education provided, is a further illustration of the attitude of the interior. In short, Jeffersonian democracy, with its idea of separation of church and state, its wish to popularize education, and its dislike for special privilege, was deeply affected by the Western society of the Old Dominion.
The Virginian reform movement, however, was unable to redress the grievance of unequal apportionment. In 1780 Jefferson pointed out that the practice of allowing each county an equal representation in the legislature gave control to the numerous small counties of the tidewater, while the large populous counties of the up-country suffered. "Thus," he wrote, "the 19,000 men below the falls give law to more than 30,000 living in other parts of the state, and appoint all their chief officers, executive and judiciary."[114:1] This led to a long struggle between coast and interior, terminated only when the slave population passed across the fall line, and more nearly assimilated coast and up-country. In the mountain areas which did not undergo this change, the independent state of West Virginia remains as a monument of the contest. In the convention of 1829-30, the whole philosophy of representation was discussed, and the coast defended its control as necessary to protect property from the assaults of a numerical majority. They feared that the interior would tax their slaves in order to secure funds for internal improvements.
As Doddridge put the case:[115:1]
The principle is that the owners of slave property must be possessed of all the powers of government, however small their own numbers may be, to secure that property from the rapacity of an overgrown majority of white men. This principle admits of no relaxation, because the weaker the minority becomes, the greater will their need for power be according to their own doctrines.
Leigh of Chesterfield county declared:[115:2]
It is remarkable—I mention it for the curiosity of the fact—that if any evil, physical or moral, arise in any of the states south of us, it never takes a northerly direction, or taints the Southern breeze; whereas, if any plague originate in the North, it is sure to spread to the South and to invade us sooner or later; the influenza—the smallpox—the varioloid—the Hessian fly—the Circuit Court system—Universal Suffrage—all come from the North, and they always cross above the falls of the great rivers; below, it seems, the broad expanse of waters interposing, effectually arrests their progress.
Nothing could more clearly bring out the sense of contrast between upland and lowland Virginia, and the continued intimacy of the bond of connection between the North and its Valley and Piedmont colonies, than this unconscious testimony.
In North and South Carolina the upland South, beyond the pine barrens and the fall line, had similar grievances against the coast; but as the zone of separation was more strongly marked, the grievances were more acute. The tide of backwoods settlement flowing down the Piedmont from the north, had cut across the lines of local government and disarranged the regular course of development of the colonies from the seacoast.[116:1] Under the common practice, large counties in North Carolina and parishes in South Carolina had been projected into the unoccupied interior from the older settlements along their eastern edge.