Louisiana and Aaron Burr 135 



were pre-eminently folk who did their work with 

 their own hands. Master and man chopped and 

 plowed and reaped and builded side by side, and 

 even the leaders of the community, the militia gen- 

 erals, the legislators, and the judges, often did their 

 share of farm work, and prided themselves upon 

 their capacity to do it well. They had none of 

 that feeling which makes slave-owners look upon 

 manual labor as a badge of servitude. They were 

 often lazy and shiftless, but they never deified lazi- 

 ness and shiftlessness or made them into a cult. 

 The one thing they prized beyond all others was 

 their personal freedom, the right of the individual 

 to do whatsoever he saw fit. Indeed they often 

 carried this feeling so far as to make them condone 

 gross excesses, rather than insist upon the exercise 

 of even needful authority. They were by no means 

 entirely logical, but they did see and feel that slav- 

 ery was abhorrent, and that it was utterly incon- 

 sistent with the theories of their own social and 

 governmental life. As yet there was no thought 

 of treating slavery as a sacred institution, the right- 

 eousness of which must not be questioned. At the 

 Fourth of July celebrations toasts such as "The 

 total abolition of slavery" were not uncommon. 2 

 It was this feeling which prevented any manifesta- 

 tion of surprise at Blount's apparent acquiescence 

 in a section of the ordinance for the government 

 of the Territory which prohibited slavery. 



2 "Knoxville Gazette," July 17, 1795, etc. See also issue 

 Jan. 28, 1792. 



