The Backwoods Governments.

The first duty of the backwoodsmen who thus conquered the west was to institute civil government.  Their efforts to overcome and beat back the Indians went hand in hand with their efforts to introduce law and order in the primitive communities they founded; and exactly as they relied purely on themselves in withstanding outside foes, so they likewise built up their social life and their first systems of government with reference simply to their special needs, and without any outside help or direction.  The whole character of the westward movement, the methods of warfare, of settlement, and government, were determined by the extreme and defiant individualism of the backwoodsmen, their inborn independence and self-reliance, and their intensely democratic spirit.  The west was won and settled by a number of groups of men, all acting independently of one another, but with a common object, and at about the same time.  There was no one controlling spirit; it was essentially the movement of a whole free people, not of a single master-mind.  There were strong and able leaders, who showed themselves fearless soldiers and just law-givers, undaunted by danger, resolute to persevere in the teeth of disaster; but even these leaders are most deeply interesting because they stand foremost among a host of others like them.  There were hundreds of hunters and Indian fighters like Mansker, Wetzel, Kenton, and Brady; there were scores of commonwealth founders like Logan, Todd, Floyd, and Harrod; there were many adventurous land speculators like Henderson; there were even plenty of commanders like Shelby and Campbell.  These were all men of mark; some of them exercised a powerful and honorable influence on the course of events in the west.  Above them rise four greater figures, fit to be called not merely State or local, but national heroes.  Clark, Sevier, Robertson, and Boon are emphatically American worthies.  They were men of might in their day, born to sway the minds of others, helpful in shaping the destiny of the continent.  Yet of Clark alone can it be said that he did a particular piece of work which without him would have remained undone.  Sevier, Robertson, and Boon only hastened, and did more perfectly, a work which would have been done by others had they themselves fallen by the wayside. [Footnote:  Sevier’s place would certainly have been taken by some such man as his chief rival, Tipton.  Robertson led his colony to the Cumberland but a few days before old Mansker led another; and though without Robertson the settlements would have been temporarily abandoned, they would surely have been reoccupied.  If Henderson had not helped Boon found Kentucky, then Hart or some other of Henderson’s associates would doubtless have done so; and if Boon had been lacking, his place would probably have been taken by some such man as Logan.  The loss of these men would have been very serious, but of no one of them can it be said, as of Clark, that he alone could have done the work he actually did.] Important though they are for their own sakes, they are still more important as types of the men who surrounded them.