The conduct of the Americans in the years which closed with Wayne's treaty did not shine very brightly; but the conduct of the British was black, indeed. On the Northwestern frontier they behaved in a way which can scarcely be too harshly stigmatized. This does not apply to the British civil and military officers at the Lake Posts; for they were merely doing their duty as they saw it, and were fronting their foes bravely, while with loyal zeal they strove to carry out what they understood to be the policy of their superiors. The ultimate responsibility rested with these superiors, the Crown's high advisers, and the King and Parliament they represented. Their treatment both of the Indians, whom they professed to protect, and of the Americans, with whom they professed to be friendly, forms one of the darkest pages in the annals of the British in America. Yet they have been much less severely blamed for their behaviour in this matter, than for far more excusable offences. American historians, for example, usually condemn them without stint because in 1814 the army of Ross and Cockburn burned and looted the public buildings of Washington; but by rights they should keep all their condemnation for their own country, so far as the taking of Washington is concerned; for the sin of burning a few public buildings is as nothing compared with the cowardly infamy of which the politicians of the stripe of Jefferson and Madison, and the people whom they represented, were guilty in not making ready, by sea and land, to protect their Capital and in not exacting full revenge for its destruction. These facts may with advantage be pondered by those men of the present day who are either so ignorant or of such lukewarm patriotism that they do not wish to see the United States keep prepared for war and show herself willing and able to adopt a vigorous foreign policy whenever there is need of furthering American interests or upholding the honor of the American flag. America is bound scrupulously to respect the rights of the weak; but she is no less bound to make stalwart insistance on her own rights as against the strong.
Their Treachery towards Both the Indians and the Americans.
The count against the British on the Northwestern frontier is, not that they insisted on their rights, but that they were guilty of treachery to both friend and foe. The success of the British was incompatible with the good of mankind in general, and of the English-speaking races in particular; for they strove to prop up savagery, and to bar the westward march of the settler-folk whose destiny it was to make ready the continent for civilization. But the British cannot be seriously blamed because they failed to see this. Their fault lay in their aiding and encouraging savages in a warfare which was necessarily horrible; and still more in their repeated breaches of faith. The horror and the treachery were the inevitable outcome of the policy on which they had embarked; it can never be otherwise when a civilized government endeavors to use, as allies in war, savages whose acts it cannot control and for whose welfare it has no real concern.
Doubtless the statesmen who shaped the policy of Great Britain never deliberately intended to break faith, and never fully realized the awful nature of the Indian warfare for which they were in part responsible; they thought very little of the matter at all in the years which saw the beginning of their stupendous struggle with France. But the acts of their obscure agents on the far interior frontier were rendered necessary and inevitable by their policy. To encourage the Indians to hold their own against the Americans, and to keep back the settlers, meant to encourage a war of savagery against the border vanguard of white civilization; and such a war was sure to teem with fearful deeds. Moreover, where the interests of the British Crown were so manifold it was idle to expect that the Crown's advisers would treat as of much weight the welfare of the scarcely-known tribes whom their agents had urged to enter a contest which was hopeless except for British assistance. The British statesmen were engaged in gigantic schemes of warfare and diplomacy; and to them the Indians and the frontiersmen alike were pawns on a great chessboard, to be sacrificed whenever necessary. When the British authorities deemed it likely that there would be war with America, the tribes were incited to take up the hatchet; when there seemed a chance of peace with America the deeds of the tribes were disowned; and peace was finally assured by a cynical abandonment of their red allies. In short, the British, while professing peace with the Americans, treacherously incited the Indians to war against them; and, when it suited their own interests, they treacherously abandoned their Indian allies to the impending ruin. [Footnote: The ordinary American histories, often so absurdly unjust to England, are right in their treatment of the British actions on the frontier in 1793-94. The ordinary British historians simply ignore the whole affair. As a type of their class, Mr. Percy Gregg may be instanced. His "History of the United States" is a silly book; he is often intentionally untruthful, but his chief fault is his complete ignorance of the facts about which he is writing. It is, of course, needless to criticise such writers as Mr. Gregg and his fellows. But it is worth while calling attention to Mr. Goldwin Smith's "The United States," for Mr. Goldwin Smith is a student, and must be taken seriously. He says: "That the British government or anybody by its authority was intriguing with the Indians against the Americans is an assertion of which there seems to be no proof." If he will examine the Canadian Archives, from which I have quoted, and the authorities which I cite, he will find the proof ready to hand. Prof. A. C. McLaughlin has made a capital study of this question in his pamphlet on "The Western Posts and the British Debts." What he says cannot well be controverted.]
CHAPTER III.
TENNESSEE BECOMES A STATE, 1791-1796.
The Southwestern Territory.
"The Territory of the United States of America South of the River Ohio" was the official title of the tract of land which had been ceded by North Carolina to the United States, and which a few years later became the State of Tennessee. William Blount, the newly appointed Governor, took charge late in 1790. He made a tour of the various counties, as laid out under authority of the State of North Carolina, rechristening them as counties of the Territory, and summoning before him the persons in each county holding commissions from North Carolina, at the respective court-houses, where he formally notified them of the change. He read to them the act of Congress accepting the cessions of the claims of North Carolina; then he read his own commission from President Washington; and informed them of the provision by North Carolina that Congress should assume and execute the government of the new Territory "in a manner similar to that which they support northwest of the River Ohio." Following this he formally read the ordinance for the government of the Northwestern Territory. He commented upon and explained this proclamation, stating that under it the President had appointed the Governor, the Judges, and the Secretary of the new Territory, and that he himself, as Governor, would now appoint the necessary county officers.
Blount Inaugurated as Governor.
Slavery in the New Territory.
The remarkable feature of this address was that he read to the assembled officers in each county, as part of the law apparently binding upon them, Article 6 of the Ordinance of 1787, which provided that there should be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude in the Northwestern Territory. [Footnote: Blount MSS., Journal of Proceedings of William Blount, Esq., Governor in and over the Territory of the United States of America South of the River Ohio, in his executive department, October 23, 1790.] It had been expressly stipulated that this particular provision as regards slavery should not apply to the Southwestern Territory, and of course Blount's omission to mention this fact did not in any way alter the case; but it is a singular thing that he should without comment have read, and his listeners without comment have heard, a recital that slavery was abolished in their territory. It emphasizes the fact that at this time there was throughout the West no very strong feeling on the subject of slavery, and what feeling there was, was if anything hostile. The adventurous backwoods farmers who composed the great mass of the population in Tennessee, as elsewhere among and west of the Alleghanies, were not a slave-owning people, in the sense that the planters of the seaboard were. They were preeminently folk who did their work with their own hands. Master and man chopped and ploughed and reaped and builded side by side, and even the leaders of the community, the militia generals, the legislators, and the judges, often did their share of farm work, and prided themselves upon their capacity to do it well. They had none of that feeling which makes slave-owners look upon manual labor as a badge of servitude. They were often lazy and shiftless, but they never deified laziness and shiftlessness or made them into a cult. The one thing they prized beyond all others was their personal freedom, the right of the individual to do whatsoever he saw fit. Indeed they often carried this feeling so far as to make them condone gross excesses, rather than insist upon the exercise of even needful authority. They were by no means entirely logical, but they did see and feel that slavery was abhorrent, and that it was utterly inconsistent with the theories of their own social and governmental life. As yet there was no thought of treating slavery as a sacred institution, the righteousness of which must not be questioned. At the Fourth of July celebrations toasts such as "The total abolition of slavery" were not uncommon. [Footnote: Knoxville Gazette, July 17, 1795, etc. See also issue Jan. 28, 1792.] It was this feeling which prevented any manifestation of surprise at Blount's apparent acquiescence in a section of the ordinance for the government of the Territory which prohibited slavery.