their equal, we cannot know. They died and took the cause and method of their extermination with them. For what purpose were they permitted to live? This is just one of those mysteries connected all down the drifting years with the lives of men that are always pondered but never solved. It is only another form of the same old questions-Whence, Wherefore, Whither? If our Cherokee chief had been permitted to reflect on the life and destiny of those who were dead and gone before him, he would not have been able, for want of mental training, to coin his thoughts into the words of Tennyson, but he would still have had those thoughts: "But what am I? An infant crying in the night, And with no language but a cry." No son of man, whether white or black or red or yellow or brown, has ever lived and played his little part across the stage of action, and then departed into the limbo of the unnumbered dead, but has consciously or unconsciously, expressly or in vague, mute yearnings, not co-ordinated or put in words, echoed Tennyson's lines? Those lines are humanity's universal and never ending cry, men's wail for light and knowledge. It is the gloom. that prompts these unhappy lines, the despair that forces the sorrowing wail from the helpless lips of men, that cause them to "Walk thoughtful on the solemn silent shore Of that vast ocean they must sail so soon." If instead of the panorama that was unveiled before him another had been presented to this chief's gaze-that of a great State with its teeming thousands of people, its cities, its commerce, its buildings, its railroads, its everything that makes up the State of Tennessee-his untutored mind would have been staggered and pitiful and impotent, and his prayer would have gone up to the Great Spirit to tell him what it all meant. The great State which was to arise upon the crushed prowess of the Cherokee Nation and to follow its immolation upon the altar of human progress, could not have been fathomed by him; and it is to chronicle how the foundations of that State were laid, and of the grand character of those who did the building, that this book is written. The men who laid the foundations of Tennessee were not only physically fearless but morally brave. In their personal and social contact with each other they were frank, truthful, candid and honest, and the times afforded no tolerance of a physical coward; their everyday lives permitted no polite deception or social doubledealing. They stood for none of that most dangerous form of falsehood-the telling of half-truths. Above everything, the times forced every man to assume full responsibility for all his words and acts, and did not countenance his escaping moral, legal, or physical responsibility, by attributing his wrongful deeds to the influence of others. As a result of this standard, moral cowardice was never or rarely found. The pioneer did not know, and had no desire to learn, the art of laying his failings and weaknesses upon the shoulders of some one else. There was no lack of kindliness, liberality and charity, but in no sense were these qualities permitted to divest a man of full individual responsibility. Every man was expected to do, and did do, his full duty. The times did not produce or respect weaklings, milk-sops or invertebrates. Every effort of legislation, the force of public opinion and the power of personal influence, tended to fasten in the mind of all the conviction that each must stand for himself, whether his deeds were committed singly or in connection with other men; and that conditions and environment would not be permitted to exculpate him and incriminate others connected with him. To inculcate any other principle would be to destroy the foundation upon which government rests, to inject a fatal weakness into the moral fiber of people, to render men mere weaklings, and to create hypocrites, charlatans and dissemblers. In looking back over the careers of the men who laid the foundations of Tennessee, and studying their lives and characters, we can easily see that the conservation and perpetuation of their type of manhood and character is desirable not only for Tennessee but for all the world. As civilization progresses and wealth increases and society becomes more highly organized, there is a tendency to forget the grand primary qualities of the Tennessee pioneer. The old time virtues are the grand virtues of human character-the virtues of simplicity, candor, kindliness, frankness, courage and truthfulness. The founders of Tennessee wore pioneer clothes and lived in poor houses; they were not highly educated and generally were not polished in their manners; but in those qualities that have conserved and sustained the best there is in human character in all ages, qualities that inperatively command respect, and which all men believe in and endorse, whether their lives coincide with them or not, qualities to which we are willing to risk our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor, they were chiefs among the grand actors of the world. They were totally unconscious that they were heroes and heroines; it seems never to have occurred to them that they were making a new and historical departure in the new life of America; that some day everything they did and said would be of interest not only to their descendants, but to the whole country. The settlement of Tennessee and Kentucky was different from any other pioneer movement in America, in that the settlers received no help from any outside source; the movement had to conquer or die; the actors must win of their own prowess; there was no compromise; white civilization was in daily and deadly combat with the red man's savagery, and both could not occupy the soil at the same time. The grand simple characters of the men and women of that early day ought to be taught in every school of Tennessee, and we may be permitted to express the hope that the time is not far distant when the Legislature of the State will command by statute that Tennessee history shall be made a major study in every Tennessee school, and shall be taught by the most competent instructors. Candor, loyalty to truth, uprightness of principle, simplicity of life, firmness of conviction, thorough personal responsibility, and contempt for doubledealing, are all the finest basic elements of character, and are all exemplified in the early records of the State, and every Tennessee child should know them. The State has not been poor in its production of fine characters and great men. The chapters of this book that follow tell of some of the Tennesseans who were great not only in the State but in the Nation. There are scores of others entitled to be put on Fame's roll-call and their names acclaimed as the years go by. There are hundreds who were great and fine in character, and who would have been great in accomplishment had conditions presented themselves. There have been men of this last type living all through the history of this State. Tennessee has produced men whose manly and moral make-up is so well-rounded, so chivalrous, so fine in principle, that we involuntarily turn to them as the ideals of practical life-men who are not narrow in outlook, or small in human sympathy, or Puritanical in pro fession, or insincere in practice, but big, intellectual, broad, chivalrous and fearless men, who meet foursquare every responsibility that comes, and evade nothing that it is their duty to shoulder or to face. Different nations have varying notions of the public service that is greatest. England accepts, generally, military and naval service, and her three grandest monuments are to men of this type-Wellington for the victory at Waterloo, to Nelson for Trafalgar, to Marlboro for Blenheim. Tennessee has erected no monuments. She has not seen fit to honor her great men in that way. She has given the names of citizens to more than a third of the counties in the State and so memorialized them. In her affections she hands the laurel wreath to Andrew Jackson the soldier and to James K. Polk the civilian; she crowns Farragut the sailor and Andrew Johnson the defender of the Constitution; she acclaims Isham G. Harris a great Senator and N. B. Forrest a great cavalry leader; she writes down Commodore Maury as a great geographer of the sea, William T. Haskell as greatest among her orators, John Sevier as the chief builder of the State, Sam Houston as an Ajax among leaders, and in devoted affection she hails Thomas F. Gailor, Protestant Episcopal Bishop of the State, as one who illustrates intellectual achievement at its loftiest and eloquence at its golden period among men. In fine well-rounded character, admirable in every part, among others of her great sons, Tennessee can point to James D. Porter, twentieth Governor of the State, who served as a Circuit Judge; two terms as Governor; Assistant Secretary of State under President Cleveland's second administration; United States Minister to Chili; President of the Peabody College for Teachers, and President of the Tennessee Historical Society. It may be that there are Tennesseans whose records would be considered greater, but from a personal acquaintance of many years the author submits that there never was a Tennessee character that was finer. Every quality that goes to make up fine manhood was his. He loved his State and unflinchingly performed every duty; despised the very thought of insincerity; lived upon the platform that no man was perfect; and held a broad charity for the failings of his fellowman. When he died a life went out that could well be set up for other Tennesseans to emulate. CHAPTER 2. Tennessee and its Pioneers-The Wilderness Road— Daniel Boone's Death-Byron's Tribute to Boone Marking the Trail-Cherokee Cession of South West Point to United States. When William Bean planted his cabin in 1769 on Boone's Creek near its junction with the Watauga River, he never dreamed that his humble habitation was to become a land-mark in the future State of Tennessee that would never fade from the record of the State, nor that he as the actual first settler of the State would be as immortal as the State itself. The cabin was planted one hundred and forty-eight years ago, and today, Tennessee with a population of two and a quarter millions, teaches its school-children the story of William Bean and his cabin, and gives him that lofty place in its annals that is ever accorded to first settlers of cities and States. If some genius of the brush would go to Boone's Creek, find the exact spot of that historical cabin, and put on canvas in colors that would not dim a picture of it and its location, and hang it in the Capitol of Tennessee, what an inspiration it would be to all Tennesseans now and to all that may come hereafter! What an appeal that dumb canvas would make to every eye that gazed upon it! With what intense interest Tennesseans would look, and in its humble construction, see a reflection of more than a century and a half of State history, with its story of the slow but grand work of the pioneers-their courage, their self-denial, their suffering, and, in hundreds of cases, their death! If from his abode in the undiscovered country William Bean can survey the commonwealth of Tennessee, with its every mark of modern life and its stately march keeping step with the progress of the years, his whole being must glow with exultation and proclaim that he was the corner-stone of it all, he the original spring that put it all in motion! We would like to know more about him, how he looked, what brought him to the Watauga, who constituted his family, when he died and where |