The private correspondence of almost all the public men of the period, from Washington, Madison, and Gouverneur Morris down, is full of the subject.  Innumerable people of position and influence dreamed of acquiring untold wealth in this manner.  Almost every man of note was actually or potentially a land speculator; and in turn almost every prominent pioneer from Clark and Boon to Shelby and Robertson was either himself one of the speculators or an agent for those who were.  Many people did not understand the laws on the subject, or hoped to evade them; and the hope was as strong in the breast of the hunter, who made a “tomahawk claim” by blazing a few trees, and sold it for a small sum to a new-comer, as in that of the well-to-do schemer, who bought an Indian title for a song, and then got what he could from all outsiders who came in to dwell on the land.

This speculative spirit was a powerful stimulus to the settlement not only of Kentucky, but of middle Tennessee.  Henderson’s claim included the Cumberland country, and when North Carolina annulled his rights, she promised him a large but indefinitely located piece of land in their place.  He tried to undersell the state in the land market, and undoubtedly his offers had been among the main causes that induced Robertson and his associates to go to the Cumberland when they did.  But at the time it was uncertain whether Cumberland lay in Virginia or North Carolina, as the line was not run by the surveyors until the following spring; and Robertson went up to see Clark, because it was rumored that the latter had the disposal of Virginia “cabin-rights”; under which each man could, for a small sum, purchase a thousand acres, on condition of building a cabin and raising a crop.  However, as it turned out, he might have spared himself the journey, for the settlement proved to be well within the Carolina boundary.

    Many Settlers Join Him.

In the fall very many men came out to the new settlement, guided thither by Robertson and Mansker; the former persuading a number who were bound to Kentucky to come to the Cumberland instead.  Among them were two or three of the Long Hunters, whose wanderings had done so much to make the country known.  Robertson’s especial partner was a man named John Donelson.  The latter went by water and took a large party of immigrants, including all the women and children, down the Tennessee, and thence up the Ohio and Cumberland to the Bluff or French Lick. [Footnote:  The plan was that Robertson should meet this party at the Muscle Shoals, and that they should go from thence overland; but owing to the severity of the winter, Robertson could not get to the shoals.] Among them were Robertson’s entire family, and Donelson’s daughter Rachel, the future wife of Andrew Jackson, who missed by so narrow a margin being mistress of the White House.  Robertson, meanwhile, was to lead the rest of the men by land, so that they should get there first and make ready for the coming of their families.