THE UPPER OHIO AND MIDDLE TENNESSEE
Westsylvania.—While Henderson was founding Transylvania another region west of the mountains was being settled and was struggling for independent statehood. Emigrants from Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, and other states had crossed the mountains and settled on the tributaries of the upper Ohio in what are now western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and eastern Ohio. By the middle of 1776 there were said to be 25,000 families on the tributaries of the Ohio above the Scioto River. But the land which they occupied was in dispute between Virginia and Pennsylvania, and the Indiana and Vandalia Companies, and the settlers took up the struggle, quarreling over land titles and jurisdiction. The disorders prevented effective organization against the Indians. Shortly after the Declaration of Independence the settlers memorialized Congress, asking independent statehood as a "sister colony and fourteenth province of the American confederacy," under the name of Westsylvania, whose boundaries they described, but the request was not granted.
The Cumberland settlement.—Robertson was the type of frontiersmen desirous to be ever on the move. In 1779 he prospected at French Lick, returned to Watauga, raised a colony, and in the fall led it forth. The women and children were conducted by Donelson down the Tennessee and up the Cumberland, while Robertson, guided by Mansker, led the men overland. Nashborough, now Nashville, was founded at the Cumberland Bend, and other stations were occupied along the river. In 1780 a convention formed an "Association" much like that of Watauga, but after three years of independence the district became Davidson County, North Carolina.
THE PROVINCE OF QUEBEC
The French people.—At the time of the conquest the Canadian people numbered about 65,000 living in the St. Lawrence Valley, with several thousand scattered among the western posts. The settlers were in the main a frugal, industrious, unlettered, religious people. They were of two distinct classes, the gentry and the peasant tenants. After the war there was a considerable emigration to France of the official, noble, and commercial classes, leaving chiefly cultivators of the soil and fur traders. By 1775 the population had grown to perhaps 90,000, chiefly through natural increase of the French. By 1784 the population was 113,000.
The British settlers.—The conquest left in the province and attracted to it later a small body of British settlers but by 1775 they did not number more than five or six hundred. Most of them lived in the towns of Quebec and Montreal, and engaged in business, especially in the fur trade, many as agents for English houses, others being independent merchants. When Hillsborough restored seignorial tenure, many of them acquired seigniories, though they continued to live by trade.
Military rule.—British rule in Canada began with the capitulation of Montreal in September, 1760. General Amherst was made governor-general, with lieutenant-governors at Quebec, Montreal, and Three Rivers. From that time to the enforcement of the Proclamation of 1763 Canada was under military rule. But French law and customs were followed in the main, and there was little discontent.
Civil government established.—Civil government was established in August, 1764. The governor was assisted by an executive council composed of the lieutenant-governor, chief justice, and eight citizens. The government provided by the Proclamation of 1763 was unsuited to a population almost wholly French, professing the Catholic religion, and living under laws and customs of their own. The Proclamation provided for an assembly, but none was held in Quebec because the French people would not take the test oath, and the British settlers were too few in numbers to warrant an assembly representing them alone. Uncertainty existed regarding tithes and the future status of the Catholic Church. The Proclamation contemplated the establishment of British law, but practice was uncertain. The French inhabitants were not politically ambitious, but the British were aggressive in their demands for an assembly and the uniform establishment of English law.
The Quebec Act.—Under these circumstances a change of system was deemed necessary. It was provided by the Quebec Act of 1774, the first parliamentary legislation for Canada. The act maintained the privileges of the Catholic clergy, tithes from Catholic subjects being continued. French civil procedure was established, with some exceptions, but English criminal procedure was enforced. Provision was made for an appointive executive council with powers to make ordinances for the province, but no provision was made for a provincial assembly.
Boundaries extended.—The population of the Illinois country was similar to that of Quebec. The French habitants there had been demanding civil government, and it had been complained by the Montreal traders that the prosperity of Canada had been impaired by cutting off the western posts. Therefore the boundaries of Quebec were extended to include the region between the Ohio River and the Upper Mississippi. By the Proclamation of 1763 Labrador east of River St. John's, Anticosti, and the Magdalens, had been attached to Newfoundland. Labrador now began to develop commerce with the interior and the North and with Newfoundland. Opposition to the fishing admirals of Newfoundland caused these three districts to be annexed to Quebec in 1774.