The Westward Movement

by Unknown

The progress of the Westward Movement in colonial times was slow. A hundred and fifty years passed before the frontier line was pushed beyond the Appalachian ridge. This slowness was due in part to the action of the English government. Soon after England (in 1763) came into possession of the country west of the Alleghanies the king issued a proclamation reserving most of the newly acquired territory for the use of the Indians and forbidding the governors of the colonies to grant lands to white men west of the mountains. If this plan had been carried out, English civilization would have been confined to the seaboard, and the richest and fairest portions of the earth would have been permanently reserved as a hunting-ground for savages and as a lair for wild beasts. But the War of the Revolution took the Western country from England and gave it to the United States. The Ohio valley was then thrown open to settlers, and white men from all parts of the world rushed into the new lands like hungry cattle rushing into new pastures. In twenty years after the acknowledgment of our independence (in 1783) the Frontier Line moved farther westward than it had moved in a century under British rule.

KENTUCKY.

The first great stream of Western emigration after the Revolution flowed into the region now included within the borders of Kentucky and Tennessee. This territory was a neutral hunting-ground for Northern and Southern Indians. The red men hunted over it, but did not live permanently upon it or claim it as their own. The district, therefore, was easier for the white man to settle than were the surrounding regions in which the Indians had permanent homes.

The settlement of the Kentucky region really began several years before the Revolution. In 1769 Daniel Boone, a great hunter and one of the most interesting of American pioneers, left his home on the Yadkin River, in North Carolina, to seek the wilderness of Kentucky. With five companions he passed through the gorges of the Cumberland Gap and reached the blue-grass region, "a land of running waters, of groves and glades, of prairies, cane-brakes, and stretches of lofty forests."

Daniel Boone.

Boone returned to North Carolina, but not to remain. His restless spirit still yearned for the beautiful banks of the far-off Kentucky. In 1773 he sold his farms, and with wife and children and about fifty persons besides started for Kentucky with the purpose of making a permanent settlement there. On the way, however, the party was attacked by Indians—for even in this neutral territory the Indian was sometimes troublesome—and Boone and his companions were compelled to turn back.

But the fame of the Kentucky country was now widespread, and its settlement was near at hand. In 1774 James Harrod of Virginia, with fifty men, floated down the Ohio River in flatboats, and, ascending the Kentucky River, selected the present site of Harrodsburg as a place for a settlement and built some cabins. The place was given the name of Harrodstown (afterward Harrodsburg) and was the first permanent settlement in Kentucky. The next year Boone safely reached Kentucky and founded the town of Boonesborough. In 1775 Lexington also was founded. "When the embattled farmers fired the shot heard round the world, a party of hunters heard the echo and baptized the station they were building Lexington." Louisville was founded in 1777.

While Boone and his followers were laying the foundation for a State on the banks of the Kentucky, other pioneers from North Carolina and Virginia were laying the foundations for another State on the banks of streams that flow into the Tennessee. In the very year (1769) that Boone visited the blue-grass region, William Bean of Virginia built himself a log cabin on the Watauga River. Pioneers came and settled near Bean, and in a short time several hundred people had their homes on the banks of the Watauga. This Watauga settlement was the beginning of the State of Tennessee.

North Carolina continued to let her Western children shift for themselves, until at last for their own defense and safety they organized as a separate State, and called the new State Franklin, in honor of Benjamin Franklin. John Sevier, the greatest of the early leaders in Tennessee, was elected governor of Franklin, and Greenville was made the capital of the State. But the State of Franklin had only a short life. North Carolina came forward promptly and asserted her rights, and by 1788 the officers of Franklin were all driven from power, the new State was dead, and North Carolina was again in full control of Tennessee.