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.And if we may accept the impressions ofan English observer, life in the Shenandoah Valley was in happy accord, in the middle of the century, with thearcadian simplicity of these ideals."I could not but reflect with pleasure on the situation of these people," saysRichard Burnaby."Far from the bustle of the world, they live in the most delightful climate, and the richestsoil imaginable; they are everywhere surrounded with the most beautiful prospects and sylvan scenes;.they.live in perfect liberty; they are ignorant of want, and acquainted with but few vices.Their inexperience ofthe elegancies of life precludes any regret that they possess not the means of enjoying them; but they possesswhat many persons would give half their dominions for, health, content, and tranquillity of mind."[Illustration: Area of German Settlements and Frontier Line in 1775.]The description does not lack truth, but perhaps it somewhat smacks of fashionable eighteenth-centuryphilosophy.And assuredly no region on the frontier was more favored than the famous Shenandoah Valley.Little question that conditions were less idyllic in other places.Missionaries who preached the GreatAwakening in western Pennsylvania and in the Southern back country were often enough appalled byevidence of ignorance and low morals.And on the far outer frontier at White Woman's Creek, Mary Harris,still recalling after forty years' exile that "they used to be very religious in New England," told ChristopherGist in 1751 that "she wondered how white men could be so wicked as she had seen them in these woods."Neither the lyric phrase of Burnaby nor the harsh verdict of Mary Harris fitly describes those interiorcommunities that stretched from Maine to Georgia.But there, as elsewhere, doubtless, the practice of men'slives, even among the frontier Puritans of New England, or the German Protestants and Scotch Presbyteriansof the Middle and Southern colonies, often fell short of their best ideals.Leaving the sheltered existence oflong-settled communities, set down on a dangerous Indian frontier or at best in a virgin country, wherecustomary restraints were relaxed, where churches were few and schools often unknown, where action morereadily followed hard on desire and men's will made all the majesty of the law, the aggressive primaryinstincts had freer play, and society could not but take on a strain of the primitive.Even more than the originalcolonists, these dwellers on the second frontier caught something of the wild freedom of the wilderness,something of the ruthlessness of nature, something also of its self-sufficiency, something of its somber andemotional influence. CHAPTER V 67Between this primitive agricultural democracy of the interior and the commercial and landed aristocracy ofthe coast, separated geographically and differing widely in interests and ideals, conflict was inevitable.When,in 1780, Thomas Jefferson said that "19,000 men below the Falls give law to more than 30,000 living in otherparts of the state," he was proclaiming that opposition between the older and the newer America which foundexpression in provincial politics from the middle of the eighteenth century, which made a part of theRevolution, and which in every period since has been so decisive a feature of our history.In the eighteenthcentury the frontier was the home of a primitive radicalism.Where offenses were elemental and easilydetected, legal technicalities and the chicanery of courts seemed but devices for the support of idle lawyers;where debtors were most numerous and specie most scarce, few could understand why paper money wouldnot prove a panacea for poverty; where every man earned his own bread and where submission to theinevitable was the only kind of conformity that was deemed essential, slavery and a state church were thoughtto be but the bulwark of class privilege and the tyranny of kings [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.And if we may accept the impressions ofan English observer, life in the Shenandoah Valley was in happy accord, in the middle of the century, with thearcadian simplicity of these ideals."I could not but reflect with pleasure on the situation of these people," saysRichard Burnaby."Far from the bustle of the world, they live in the most delightful climate, and the richestsoil imaginable; they are everywhere surrounded with the most beautiful prospects and sylvan scenes;.they.live in perfect liberty; they are ignorant of want, and acquainted with but few vices.Their inexperience ofthe elegancies of life precludes any regret that they possess not the means of enjoying them; but they possesswhat many persons would give half their dominions for, health, content, and tranquillity of mind."[Illustration: Area of German Settlements and Frontier Line in 1775.]The description does not lack truth, but perhaps it somewhat smacks of fashionable eighteenth-centuryphilosophy.And assuredly no region on the frontier was more favored than the famous Shenandoah Valley.Little question that conditions were less idyllic in other places.Missionaries who preached the GreatAwakening in western Pennsylvania and in the Southern back country were often enough appalled byevidence of ignorance and low morals.And on the far outer frontier at White Woman's Creek, Mary Harris,still recalling after forty years' exile that "they used to be very religious in New England," told ChristopherGist in 1751 that "she wondered how white men could be so wicked as she had seen them in these woods."Neither the lyric phrase of Burnaby nor the harsh verdict of Mary Harris fitly describes those interiorcommunities that stretched from Maine to Georgia.But there, as elsewhere, doubtless, the practice of men'slives, even among the frontier Puritans of New England, or the German Protestants and Scotch Presbyteriansof the Middle and Southern colonies, often fell short of their best ideals.Leaving the sheltered existence oflong-settled communities, set down on a dangerous Indian frontier or at best in a virgin country, wherecustomary restraints were relaxed, where churches were few and schools often unknown, where action morereadily followed hard on desire and men's will made all the majesty of the law, the aggressive primaryinstincts had freer play, and society could not but take on a strain of the primitive.Even more than the originalcolonists, these dwellers on the second frontier caught something of the wild freedom of the wilderness,something of the ruthlessness of nature, something also of its self-sufficiency, something of its somber andemotional influence. CHAPTER V 67Between this primitive agricultural democracy of the interior and the commercial and landed aristocracy ofthe coast, separated geographically and differing widely in interests and ideals, conflict was inevitable.When,in 1780, Thomas Jefferson said that "19,000 men below the Falls give law to more than 30,000 living in otherparts of the state," he was proclaiming that opposition between the older and the newer America which foundexpression in provincial politics from the middle of the eighteenth century, which made a part of theRevolution, and which in every period since has been so decisive a feature of our history.In the eighteenthcentury the frontier was the home of a primitive radicalism.Where offenses were elemental and easilydetected, legal technicalities and the chicanery of courts seemed but devices for the support of idle lawyers;where debtors were most numerous and specie most scarce, few could understand why paper money wouldnot prove a panacea for poverty; where every man earned his own bread and where submission to theinevitable was the only kind of conformity that was deemed essential, slavery and a state church were thoughtto be but the bulwark of class privilege and the tyranny of kings [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]