#backwoodsmen

They were literally backwoodsmen, who had always resided on the frontiers, forming the connecting link between civilized and savage men; and who did not, in their emigration to the west, form any new acquaintance with the perils of the wilderness. They had been inhabitants of the long line of frontier lying east of the Alleghany mountains; were the descendants of men, whose lives had been spent in fierce contests with the Indians; and were themselves accustomed from infancy, to the vicissitudes of hunting and border warfare. A few of them came from Pennsylvania and Maryland, but the great body from Virginia and North Carolina.

Thus the backwoodsmen lived on the clearings they had hewed out of the everlasting forest; a grim, stern people, strong and simple, powerful for good and evil, swayed by gusts of stormy passion, the love of freedom rooted in their very hearts' core. Their lives were harsh and narrow; they gained their bread by their blood and sweat, in the unending struggle with the wild ruggedness of nature. They suffered terrible Injuries at the hands of the red men, and on their foes they waged a terrible warfare in return. They were relentless, revengeful, suspicious, knowing neither ruth nor pity; they were also upright, resolute, and fearless, loyal to their friends, and devoted to their country. In spite of their many failings, they were of all men the best fitted to conquer the wilderness and hold it against all comers.

A single generation, passed under the hard conditions of life in the wilderness, was enough to weld together into one people the representatives of these numerous and widely different races; and the children of the next generation became indistinguishable from one another. Long before the first Continental Congress assembled, the backwoodsmen, whatever their blood, had become Americans, one in speech, thought, and character, clutching firmly the land in which their fathers and grandfathers had lived before them.

In the conquest of the west the backwoods ax, shapely, well-poised, with long haft and light head, was a servant hardly standing second even to the rifle; the two were the national weapons of the American backwoodsman, and in their use he has never been excelled.