64 The Winning of the West 



They were also familiar with the representative 

 system; and accordingly they introduced it into 

 the new communities, the little forted villages serv 

 ing as natural units of representation. They were 

 already thoroughly democratic, in instinct and prin 

 ciple, and as a matter of course they made the 

 offices elective, and gave full play to the majority. 

 In organizing the militia they kept the old system 

 of county lieutenants, making them elective, not 

 appointive ; and they organized the men on the basis 

 of a regiment, the companies representing territo 

 rial divisions, each commanded by its own officers, 

 who were thus chosen by the fighting men of the 

 iort or forts in their respective districts. Thus 

 each of the backwoods commonwealths, during its 

 short-lived term of absolute freedom, reproduced 

 as its governmental system that of the old colonial 

 county, increasing the powers of the court, and 

 changing the justices into the elective representa 

 tives of an absolute democracy. The civil head, 

 the chairman of the court or committee, was 

 also usually the military head, the colonel-com 

 mandant. In fact the military side of the or 

 ganization rapidly became the most conspicuous, 

 and, at least, in certain crises, the most im 

 portant. There were always some years of des 

 perate warfare during which the entire strength 

 of the little commonwealth was drawn on to resist 



lived and least characteristic of the three, as Henderson 

 made an abortive effort to graft on it the utterly foreign 

 idea of a proprietary colony. 



