There was of course a good deal of lawlessness and a strong tendency to settle assault and battery cases in particular out of court. The officers of justice at times had to subdue criminals by open force. Andrew Jackson, who was District Attorney for the Western District, early acquired fame by the energy and success with which he put down any criminal who resisted the law. The worst offenders fled to the Mississippi Territory, there to live among Spaniards, Creoles, Indians, and lawless Americans. Lawyers drove a thriving business; but they had their own difficulties, to judge by one advertisement, which appears in the issue of the Gazette for March 23, 1793, where six of them give notice that thereafter they will give no legal advice unless it is legally paid for.
Endless Land Speculations.
All the settlers, or at least all the settlers who had any ambition to rise in the world, were absorbed in land speculations: Blount, Robertson, and the other leaders as much so as anybody. They were continually in correspondence with one another about the purchase of land warrants, and about laying them out in the best localities. Of course there was much jealousy and rivalry in the effort to get the best sites. Robertson, being farthest on the frontier, where there was most wild land, had peculiar advantages. Very soon after he settled in the Cumberland district at the close of the Revolutionary War, Blount had entered into an agreement with him for a joint land speculation. Blount was to purchase land claims from both officers and soldiers amounting in all to fifty thousand acres and enter them for the Western Territory, while Robertson was to survey and locate the claims, receiving one fourth of the whole for his reward. [Footnote: Blount MSS., Agreement between William Blount and James Robertson, Oct. 30, 1783.] Their connection continued during Blount's term as Governor, and Blount's letters to Robertson contain much advice as to how the warrants shall be laid out. Wherever possible they were of course laid outside the Indian boundaries; but, like every one else, Blount and Robertson knew that eventually the Indian lands would come into the possession of the United States, and in view of the utter confusion of the titles, and especially in view of the way the Indians as well as the whites continually broke the treaties and rendered it necessary to make new ones, both Blount and Robertson were willing to place claims on the Indian lands and trust to luck to make the claims good if ever a cession was made. The lands thus located were not lands upon which any Indian village stood. Generally they were tracts of wilderness through which the Indians occasionally hunted, but as to which there was a question whether they had yet been formally ceded to the government. [Footnote: Robertson MSS., Blount to Robertson, April 29, 1792.]
Land Tax and Land Sales.
Blount also corresponded with many other men on the question of these land speculations, and it is amusing to read the expressions of horror of his correspondents when they read that Tennessee had imposed a land tax. [Footnote: Blount MSS., Thomas Hart to Blount, Lexington, Ky., March 29, 1795.] By his activity he became a very large landed proprietor, and when Tennessee was made a State he was taxed on 73,252 acres in all. The tax was not excessive, being but $179.72. [Footnote: Do., Return of taxable property of Blount, Nashville, Sept. 9, 1796.] It was of course entirely proper for Blount to get possession of the land in this way. The theory of government on the frontier was that each man should be paid a small salary, and be allowed to exercise his private business just so long as it did not interfere with his public duties. Blount's land speculations were similar to those in which almost every other prominent American, in public or private life, was engaged. Neither Congress nor the States had as yet seen the wisdom of allowing the laud to be sold only in small parcels to actual occupants, and the favorite kind of speculation was the organization of land companies. Of course there were other kinds of business in which prominent men took part. Sevier was interested not only in land, but in various mercantile ventures of a more or less speculative kind; he acted as an intermediary with the big importers, who were willing to furnish some of the stores with six months' credit if they could be guaranteed a settlement at the end of that time. [Footnote: Do., David Allison to Blount, Oct. 16, 1791.]
Business Versatility of the Frontiersman
One of the characteristics of all the leading frontiersmen was not only the way in which they combined business enterprises with their work as Government officials and as Indian fighters, but the readiness with which they turned from one business enterprise to another. One of Blount's Kentucky correspondents, Thomas Hart, the grandfather of Benton, in his letter to Blount shows these traits in typical fashion. He was engaged in various land speculations with Blount, [Footnote: Clay MSS., Blount to Hart, Knoxville, February 9, 1794. This was just as Hart was moving to Kentucky.] and was always writing to him about locating land warrants, advertising the same as required by law, and the like. He and Blount held some tens of thousands of acres of the Henderson claim, and Hart proposed that they should lay it out in five-hundred-acre tracts, to be rented to farmers, with the idea that each farmer should receive ten cows and calves to start with; a proposition which was of course hopeless, as the pioneers would not lease lands when it was so easy to obtain freeholds. In his letters, Hart mentioned cheerfully that though he was sixty-three years old he was just as well able to carry on his manufacturing business, and, on occasion, to leave it, and play pioneer, as he ever had been, remarking that he "never would be satisfied in the world while new countries could be found," and that his intention, now that he had moved to Kentucky, was to push the mercantile business as long as the Indian war continued and money was plenty, and when that failed, to turn his attention to farming and to divide up those of his lands he could not till himself, to be rented by others. [Footnote: Blount MSS., Thomas Hart to Blount, Dec. 23, 1793.]
This letter to Blount shows, by the way, as was shown by Madison's correspondent from Kentucky, that the Indian war, scourge though it was to the frontiersmen as a whole, brought some attendant benefits in its wake by putting a stimulus on the trade of the merchants and bringing ready money into the country. It must not be forgotten, however, that men like Hart and Blount, though in some ways they were benefited by the war, were in other ways very much injured, and that, moreover, they consistently strove to do justice to the Indians and to put a stop to hostilities.
In his letters Colonel Hart betrays a hearty, healthy love of life, and capacity to enjoy it, and make the best of it, which fortunately exist in many Kentucky and Tennessee families to this day. He wanted money, but the reason he wanted it was to use it in having a good time for himself and his friends, writing: "I feel all the ardor and spirit for business I did forty years ago, and see myself more capable to conduct it. Oh, if my old friend Uncle Jacob was but living and in this country, what pleasure we should have in raking up money and spending it with our friends!" and he closed by earnestly entreating Blount and his family to come to Kentucky, which he assured him was the finest country in the world, with moreover, "a very pleasant society, for," said he, "I can say with truth that the society of this place is equal, if not superior, to any that can be found in any inland town in the United States, for there is not a day that passes over our heads but I can have half a dozen strange gentlemen to dine with us, and they are from all parts of the Union." [Footnote: Blount MSS., Hart to Blount, Lexington, Feb. 15, 1795.]
The Neverending Indian Warfare.
Incessant Violation of the Treaties by Both the Red Men and the White.