In the Current of the Revolution 325 



rades were laying the foundations of their com- 

 monwealth. 



Hitherto the two chains of events had been only 

 remotely connected; but in 1776, the year of the 

 Declaration of Independence, the struggle between 

 the king and his rebellious subjects shook the whole 

 land, and the men of the Western border were 

 drawn headlong into the full current of Revolution- 

 ary warfare. From that moment our politics be- 

 came national, and the fate of each portion of our 

 country was thenceforth in some sort dependent 

 upon the welfare of every other. Each section had 

 its own work to do; the East won independence 

 while the West began to conquer the continent. 

 Yet the deeds of each were of vital consequence 

 to the other. Washington's Continentals gave the 

 West its freedom; and took in return for them- 

 selves and their children a share of the land that 

 had been conquered and held by the scanty bands 

 of tall backwoodsmen. 



The backwoodsmen, the men of the up-country, 

 were, as a whole, ardent adherents of the patriot 

 or American side. Yet there were among them 

 many loyalists or tories; and these tories included 

 in their ranks much the greater portion of the 

 vicious and the disorderly elements. This was the 

 direct reverse of what obtained along portions of 

 the seaboard, where large numbers of the peaceable, 

 well-to-do people stood loyally by the king. In the 

 up-country, however, the Presbyterian Irish, with 

 their fellows of Calvinistic stock and faith, formed 



