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Years before the
Declaration of Independence was
proclaimed, spontaneous migrations of
restless pioneers of the western parts
of Virginia and North Carolina had
formed a nucleus of civilization in the
secluded valley interposed between the
Great Smoky mountains on the east and
the Cumberland mountains on the west,
through which flowed the Watauga and the
Nolachucky rivers. This community was
destined to play a most important part
in the successful termination of the
Revolutionary War, and in the winning of
the West. It was the germ-cell of the
colonization and civilization of the
Upper Southwest.
The earliest settlers
supposed themselves to be within the
jurisdiction of Virginia, but too far
removed to have the benefit of the
protection of her government. The
Watauga pioneers were equal to the
emergency. They saw that in their
isolation they must depend upon
themselves. Accordingly, in the spring
of 1772, they formed an Association and
promulgated articles for the government
of the settlement. This agreement is
known as the "Articles of the Watauga
Association," and notable in that it was
the first written constitution adopted
by a community of American-born freemen.1
Lord Dunmore, in reporting to Lord
Dartmouth (May 16, 1774) said that they
had "to all intents and purposes erected
themselves into, though an
inconsiderable, yet a separate State."
From this infant
settlement, Captain Evan Shelby led a
company of fifty volunteers to
participate in the battle of Point
Pleasant in Lord Dunmore's War of 1774.
The following year, by the aid of the
settlers on the Watauga, the Cherokee
Indians' claim to large portions of the
Kentucky and Cumberland regions was
purchased by Richard Henderson and his
associates. The treaty was held in the
heart of the settlement, and Wataugans
aided Henderson in opening the trail
through Cumberland Gap and in the
founding of the Transylvania Colony on
Kentucky soil.
In the spring of
1776, a platoon of Wataugans crossed the
mountains and gave support to the
Carolinians in saving the city of
Charleston from the besieging British.2
When the true
latitude of the region had been
ascertained and showed that the
settlements lay within the bounds of
North Carolina, the settlers petitioned
the North Carolina Assembly to be
allowed to come under its protection.
The petition, in the handwriting of a
brilliant young Englishman then on the
Watauga, William Tatham, bore date of
July 5, 1776—one day after the
proclamation of the Declaration of
Independence in far-away Philadelphia.3
In this petition the
inhabitants pledged "that nothing will
be lacking or anything neglected that
may add weight to the glorious cause in
which we are now struggling." This
pledge was redeemed by the over-mountain
men in many battles of the Revolution,
among them that of King's Mountain where
a blow was struck that proved to be the
turning point in the progress of the war
in the South. Hardly less heroic and
contributory to the success of the
Revolution were the services of the men
of this frontier in holding in check the
Cherokee Indians who time and again, on
British incitement, attacked or
threatened to. invade North Carolina and
Virginia.
Colonel John
Montgomery, of the upper reaches of the
Holston, recruited men in the Holston
Country to go to the succor of George
Rogers Clark in his efforts to win the
Northwest for the Americans.4
In 1779-80, James
Robertson led an exodus of Wataugans to
French Lick (Nashville) and began a
settlement of the Cumberland river
region which had been included in the
bounds of the Transylvania purchase. He
was influenced to do so by Richard
Henderson, the leading spirit in the
enterprise.
To the hardy
frontiersmen, who were thus driving an
entering wedge and by occupation making
surer the claim of the Americans to the
West when a treaty of peace with Great
Britain should be formulated, it was a
matter of grave concern what power
should have jurisdiction over and
ultimate power to dispose of the
trans-Alleghany region—the States or the
Union.
The ancient colonial
charters of Virginia and North Carolina
alike defined jurisdiction as extending
as far westward as "to the South sea."
The British government, however, had
successfully resisted the contention of
these Colonies to sovereign power over
the territory west of the great mountain
barrier and had governed the broad
domain as crown lands. A few days before
the Declaration of Independence (June
29, 1776) Virginia in adopting her first
constitution seized the opportunity
formally to restate her contention to
jurisdiction over Kentucky and the
Northwest. It was declared that no
separate government was to be
established west of the Alleghany
mountains but by act of her Assembly.
Within a fortnight (July 12, 1776) an
issue was joined in the Continental
Congress when John Dickinson, of
Pennsylvania, presented a draft of
Articles of Confederation which
contained a provision that the Congress
should have the power to limit the
bounds of Colonies "which by charter, or
proclamation, or under any pretense, are
said to extend to the South seas . . .
and to assign territories for new
Colonies and ascertain their
boundaries." Article 14, as reported by
the committee, was more equivocal: "No
purchases of lands hereafter to be made
of the Indians, by Congress or private
persons, before the limits of the
colonies are ascertained, to be valid."
Jefferson, in behalf
of Virginia, promptly objected on the
ground that the italicized words carried
an implication that the ascertainment of
the limits of the claimant Colonies was
within the power of Congress, whereas
the western limits of the Southern
Colonies were already fixed at the South
seas.5
The insistence of the
smaller States and those which had no
such western claims—"landless States,"
they were called—was best expressed in
the debate by James Wilson of
Pennsylvania:
"Every gentleman has
heard much of claims to the south sea.
They are extravagant. The grants were
made upon mistakes. They were ignorant
of the geography. They thought the south
sea with-in one hundred miles of the
Atlantic ocean. It was not conceived
that they extended three thousand miles.
Lord Camden considers the claims to the
south sea as what can never be reduced
to practice. Pennsylvania has no right
to interfere in those claims, but she
has a right to say that she will not
confederate unless those claims are cut
off. I wish the colonies themselves
would cut off those claims."
Harrison, of
Virginia, boldly asserted: "By its
charter Virginia owns to the south sea.
Gentlemen shall not pare away the Colony
of Virginia."6
Congress hesitated to
bring the issue to a decision. Maryland
formally instructed her delegates that
"policy and justice require that a
country unsettled at the commencement of
this war, claimed by the British crown
and ceded to it by the Treaty of Paris,
if wrested from the common enemy by the
blood and treasure of the thirteen
States, should be considered as common
property, subject to be parceled out
with free governments."
North Carolina stood
firmly by the side of Virginia in the
struggle which well-nigh imperiled the
formation of the Union of the
Confederation. The weight of these and
other claimant States was so great that
when the Articles of Confederation were
adopted the ownership and control of the
West was left unsolved. That instrument
incorporated the following provision in
relation to the admission into the Union
of new States: "No other Colony shall be
admitted into the same, unless such
admission be agreed to by nine States."
The crucial question of sovereign power
and jurisdiction was left open to vex
and distract Congress and people alike
in after years.
_____________
1 "One can find no more
striking fact in American history, nor
one more typical, than the simple ease
with which these frontiersmen on the
banks of the western waters, on the
threshold of the central valley of the
continent, finding themselves beyond the
reach of eastern law, formed an
association and exercised the rights and
privileges of
self-government."—McLaughlin, The
Confederation and the Constitution, 132.
2 Williams, "The First
Volunteers of the 'Volunteer State'," in
Tennessee Historical Magazine, VIII, No.
1.
3 Williams, William Tatham,
Wataugan, 3, also in Tennessee
Historical Magazine, VII, 154. Winsor in
error says that the instrument is in
Sevier's handwriting. Westward Movement,
79.
4 Calendar Virginia State
Papers, III, 441-2..
5 John Adams's Works, II,
492-502.
6 John Adams's Works, II,
492-502. |
