Tennessee, the Volunteer State, 1769-1923

(2) Their leader is the best man among them-bowman, rower, rifleman, statesman. Says an old historian in an early history of them: "You see as many leaders as you behold rowers, for they all command, obey, and teach. Shipwreck disciplines but does not deter them."

(3) They will not intermarry with inferior peoples. The pure native Anglo-Saxon blood-children of pure native Anglo-Saxon whites-in the nine states of which Tennessee is the center is about ninety-six per cent. No other section of the United States can show nearly such a per cent. If the South had yielded to her enemies and miscegenated, the Mexican border would have been at the Ohio, the Nation would have been half white and half Haytian, and the Hindenburg Line would never have been broken.3

(4) They will have no religious autocrat between them and their God. The separation of church and state is part of their Magna Charta.

If abused, they fight, if their rights are infringed they rebel; if forced, they strike; and if their liberties are threatened, they murder. If the foundations of their Democracy are assailed, though it be by Kings at the end of the world, they unite from Alaska and Australia to England and America to destroy them.4

(5) They eat meat and always their bread is hot.5

They did not get their courage from rice, dried fish and bananas nor their religion from the Caesars.

Tennessee's influence has proved to be the most vital and far-reaching in the establishment of future states throughout the great Southwest including even the domain of that vast territory first traversed by William Clarke and Meriwether Lewis extending to the shores of the Pacific. The influence of such men as John Sevier, Andrew Jackson, James Robertson, Sam Houston and David Crockett was not confined to their own state of Tennessee but became a vital force in the formation of the entire Southwest.

In all of these the spirit of Andrew Jackson lives today as firmly entrenched as when it first dominated the hopes and aspirations of the young Republic. Houston and Crockett are as alive in Texas and the great Northwest today as they were at the Alamo and San Jacinto. The later cowboy of the great Northwest was only a counterpart of his predecessor of the Watauga and the Cumberland.

In the formation of the national spirit of the American Commonwealth today Jackson stands above all others like a colossus. The "Union must and shall be preserved" is as firmly entrenched in America today as when he destroyed to preserve it, the Creeks, the British, Nullification, (whether in New England or South Carolina,) and the autocracy of wealth and special interests.

3 The leprosy of Bolshevism has no part in the mental make-up of the Anglo-Saxon in the South whether he wore a uniform in Europe or only in America; or was a soldier between the plow handles or in the counting room. He will not be committed to communism. The virus of socialism that has inoculated so much of the proletariat of the North and East, will be in him a lifeless germ.-Statistics & Politics, John W. Farley, Page 46.

4 "It seems to me that all discussions of ways and means to prevent war and plans for combined nations must be based on a union in thought and heart of the Anglo-Saxon people.'-General John J. Pershing, Speech, London, July 17, 1919.

"Let it never be forgotten that these Anglo-Saxon institutions are ours in trust; we hold them for a thousand generations yet to emerge from the stream of time. They are sacred heirlooms, confided to our keeping for those who are to come after us-and if we allow them to be impaired or sullied, while passing through our hands, we are guilty of a double crime; we are traitors alike to our fathers and to posterity."-Seargent S. Prentiss.

5 A territorial law of Tennessee accepts "venison steaks, buffalo and good fat bear meat" receivable for taxes at all army posts.

Of unread histories this world is surfeited. Of "history that repeats itself and historians that repeat each other," God give us a rest! "A few facts and plenty of elbow room" was Henry Grady's rule for writing his immortal speeches. With such an authority may we be pardoned for taking the great facts of Tennessee history-the epoch-making facts of this wonderful and romantic story-and mixing with them the imagination needed for the picture? No living historian can now add to the vast amount of early historical minutiae necessary, but much of it worthless for historical purposes-collected by Haywood, Ramsey and Putnam. All of it is good, but about as good as the coarse fiber in the canvas of a picture, on which is yet to be thrown the artist's soul which makes for imagination, color and life. It is not intended in this to add more ancient fiber, only that of the later making. The old is there, and well-woven by the painstaking weavers who have gone on before. But the canvas is now waiting, and for many years has waited, for the pictures to be painted upon it. No one historian can paint them-certainly no one lacking in imagination and with rheumatic elbows. The editor, in this book, hopes to show the many great canvases, ready for the artist, who will one day seize his brush and paint.

Buku