POSSESSIONS IN THE APPALACHIAN FORESTS 139 



They are the guardians of liberty in this western world as they have ever been 

 in the Old World. They are the custodians of the old speech and the old racial 

 traits. The whole military force of the country would hardly suffice to turn 

 their mountain region into a preserve against tiieir will ; but with their aid it 

 would not require a corporal's guard. It is of the utmost importance then, 

 that in this movement their interest and their co-operation be enlisted. And 

 the best way to do this is to enlighten them, to prove to them that the move- 

 ment will be for their good in other words to educate them. 



One of the most promising signs of the times is that our people as they 

 make money are beginning to return to the soil. If our life should be con- 

 fined to urban life this country would scarcely survive two generations, or at 

 most a half dozen. The civilizations of France, of England, and of Germany, 

 like indeed that of Rome, were all preserved from going to absolute ruin by 

 the fact that their ujiper class who owned the land, after dissipating in the 

 cities, returned to their rural estates for recreation. The tendency of the time 

 has been absolutely in the direction of commerce, and if we have reaped the 

 fruits of it that are good, so we have also reaped those that are evil. There 

 was never a country in the world in which so large a portion of its wealth and 

 of its thought and activity were applied to commerce and trade as in America. 

 And we should all turn traders and go to bargaining and chaffering with each 

 other till we had lost the principles on which all moral and physical advance 

 are founded, if it were not for the country life. It is the panacea that Nature 

 has appointed for the ills of violating her laws in the unwholesome atmosphere 

 of city life. It would, therefore, appear to be the part of wisdom for every 

 man in the nation to do what he can to uplift country life. 



Owing to the physical conditions of this mountain region they have been 

 secluded and sequestered from the pathway of advance, shut within their 

 mountain walls they have been cut off from all or nearly all the advantages of 

 modern progress. 



A century or more ago they rendered an inestimable service to this coun- 

 try in that they manned and held against the Indians and the French the 

 outer bulwark of American rule on this continent. They furnished the pio- 

 neers who crossed over and seized the Mississippi Valley. Again a half cen- 

 tury ago they rendered to this country what I believe most of you here will 

 esteem an invaluable service. Without them this Union would have been 

 divided as surely as I stand addressing you tonight. Non-slave holding, par- 

 ticipating little in the advantages of citizenship in the several states and 

 therefore caring less for the divisions of state lines than for nationality and 

 racial solidity, knowing little of history save that which their grandsires hall 

 handed down to them, with the rifles with which they fought at King's Moun- 

 tain and on the Kanawaha, they espoused by a great majority the cause of the 

 Union. They furnished over 180,000 men to the Union armies, and they were 

 not bounty jumpers or conscripts. But more than this they furnished to the 

 Union cause a great friendly territory staunch for the l^nion through its breadth 

 and length, extending for hundreds of miles down through the south and cut- 

 ting the Confederate south in two. But for them Maryland and Kentucky 

 would have gone out of the ITnion with a rush and Tennessee and Virginia 

 would have been solid from east to west. You will perhaps get some estimate 

 of what they merit at the hands of the Union if you but recall that in their 

 territory Rosecrans, one of McClellan's lieutenants, was able to withstand 

 him who was possibly the greatest captain of the English speaking race. When 

 the seat of war was shifted from the mountains of West Virginia to the low 

 lands of eastern Virginia, Lee was able to sweep McClellan from the gates of 

 Richmond. But for them Missionary Ridge and Chattanooga would never 

 have given Grant his laurels ; but for them Sherman could never have marched 



