In the times just preceding and following the Revolutionary War, the American colonies, even though bold enough to encounter successfully the forces of the mother country, were none the less timid and lacking in self confidence. There was no strong centralized government, nor was the loyalty of the different colonies or the different men of each colony a thing grounded upon reason or even an imperative self interest.
In no thing was America so rich as in big men, by which I do not mean "great" men as the term commonly goes. The characters of those early days stand out clearly and distinctly before us now. It was still the day of individualism. The men of the Free State were the boldest of those bold individuals who headed out from the secure settlements of the seaboard, through gloomy forests, into the unknown wilderness, west of what was then the backbone of the United States, the rugged Alleghany range.
These men made their own trails, and they were more careful with the trails that led westward than with those that connected them with the East that they had left behind. It was no act of disloyalty that caused souls bold as these to cast about them in matters of organization and of government. The day of kings was gone for them. The day of Liberty was dawning. They carried with them, as have their west-bound fellows ever since, the principles of self-government. Where the community was, there arose the Law, there began the state.
With them the community was not the population they had left far behind, but that population close at hand, banded together, experiencing a common danger, and entertaining a common ambition,--the population that had come West and intended to remain. The branches of the Law no longer sheltered them. They were alone. There was no Law. What, then, was to be done except to plant anew the seeds of the Law, and let it blossom here, as it had done before, and has since, on the soil of America?
Yet, poor as was the hold that these people now retained upon the country that bore them, they were not lacking in active loyalty. When they heard of the first battles of the Revolution, the first thought of the men of the "Washington District" was how they might best prove of service in the conflict that was to ensue. So much might be expected, for the name of Washington District was given by reason of Sevier's friendship with Washington, later to be the first president of the States; and the District had sent from its scanty numbers fifty riflemen, under Captain Evan Shelby, who took part on the Indian battlefield of Point Pleasant, in Virginia, in the fall of 1774.