lying his theory of the "concurrent majority." 20 This adjustment was effected, however, only after the advance of the black belt toward the interior had assimilated portions of the Piedmont to lowland ideals. When we turn to North Carolina's upper country we find the familiar story, but with a more tragic ending. The local officials owed their selection to the governor and the council whom he appointed. Thus power was all concentrated in the official " ring" of the lowland area. The men of the interior resented the extortionate fees and the poll tax, which bore with unequal weight upon the poor settlers of the back country. This tax had been continued after sufficient funds had been collected to extinguish the debt for which it was originally levied, but venal sheriffs had failed to pay it into the treasury. A report of 1770 showed at least one defaulting sheriff in every county of the province.21 This tax, which was almost the sole tax of the colony, was to be collected in specie, for the warehouse system, by which staples might be accepted, while familiar on the coast, did not apply to the interior. The specie was exceedingly difficult to obtain; in lack of it, the farmer saw the sheriff, who owed his appointment to the dominant lowland planters, sell the lands of the delinquent to his speculative friends. Lawyers and court fees followed. In short, the interior felt that it was being exploited.22 and it had no redress, for the legislature was so apportioned that 20 Turner," Rise of the New West," pp. 50-52, 331; Calhoun, “Works,” i, pp. 400-405. 21"N .C. Colon. Records," vii, pp. xiv-xvii. 22 See Bassett, "Regulators of N. C." in Amer. Hist. Assoc. "Report," 1894, pp. 141 (bibliog.) et seq.; "N. C. Colon. Records," pp. vii-x (Saunder's introductions are valuable); Caruthers, "David Caldwell" (Greensborough, N. C., 1842); Waddell, "Colonial Officer" (Raleigh, 1890); M. De L. Haywood, “Governor William Tryon" (Raleigh, N. C., 1903); Clewell, Wachovia," chap. x; W. E. Fitch, "Some Neglected History of N. C.” (N. Y., 1905); L. A. McCorkle and F. Nash, in “N. 66 all power rested in the old lowland region. Efforts to secure paper money failed by reason of the governor's opposition under instructions from the crown, and the currency was contracting at the very time when population was rapidly increasing in the interior. As in New England, in the days of Shays' Rebellion, violent prejudice existed against the judiciary and the lawyers, and it must, of course, be understood that the movement was not free from frontier dislike of taxation and the restraints of law and order in general. In 1766 and 1768, meetings were held in the upper counties to organize the opposition, and an "association " was formed, the members of which pledged themselves to pay no more taxes or fees until they satisfied themselves that these were agreeable to law. The Regulators, as they called themselves, assembled in the autumn of 1768 to the number of nearly four thousand, and tried to secure terms of adjustment. In 1770 the court-house at Hillsboro was broken into by a mob. The assembly passed some measures designed to conciliate the back country; but before they became operative, Governor Tryon's militia, about twelve hundred men, largely from the lowlands, and led by the gentry whose privileges were involved, met the motley army of the Regulators, who numbered about two thousand, in the battle of the Alamance (May, 1771). Many were killed and wounded, the Regulators dispersed, and over six thousand men came into camp and took the oath of submission to the colonial authorities. The battle was not the first battle of the Revolution, as it has been sometimes called, for it had little or no C. Booklet" (Raleigh, 1901-07), iii; Wheeler, "North Carolina,” ii, pp. 301 et seq.; Cutter, "Lynch Law," chap. ii. and iii. 23 Bassett, loc. cit., p. 152. 24 Wheeler, North Carolina," ii, pp. 301-306; "N. C. Colon. Records," vii, pp. 251, 699. relation to the stamp act; and many of the frontiersmen involved, later refused to fight against England because of the very hatred which had been inspired for the lowland Revolutionary leaders in this battle of the Alamance. The interior of the Carolinas was a region where neighbors, during the Revolution, engaged in internecine conflicts of Tories against Whigs. But in the sense that the battle of Alamance was a conflict against privilege, and for equality of political rights and power, it was indeed a preliminary battle of the Revolution, although fought against many of the very men who later professed Revolutionary doctrines in North Carolina. The need of recognizing the importance of the interior led to concessions in the convention of 1776 in that state. "Of the forty-four sections of the constitution, thirteen are embodiments of reforms sought by the Regulators." 25 But it was in this period that hundreds of North Carolina backwoodsmen crossed the mountains to Tennessee and Kentucky, many of them coming from the heart of the Regulator region. They used the device of "associations" to provide for government in their communities.20 In the matter of apportionment, North Carolina showed the same lodgment of power in the hands of the coast, even after population preponderated in the Piedmont.27 XIt is needless to comment on the uniformity of the evidence which has been adduced, to show that the Old West, the interior region from New England to Georgia, had a common grievance against the coast; that it was deprived throughout most of the region of its due share of representation, and neglected and oppressed in local government in large portions of 25"N. C. Colon. Records," viii, p. xix. 26 Turner, in Amer. Hist. Review, i, p. 76. the section. The familiar struggle of West against East, of democracy against privileged classes, was exhibited along the entire line. The phenomenon must be considered as a unit, not in the fragments of state histories. It was a struggle of interior against coast. VI. Perhaps the most noteworthy Western activity in the Revolutionary era, aside from the aspects already mentioned, was in the part which the multitude of sects in the Old West played in securing the great contribution which the United States made to civilization by providing for complete religious liberty, a secular state with free churches. Particularly the Revolutionary constitutions of Pennsylvania and Virginia, under the influence of the back country, insured religious freedom. The effects of the North Carolina upland area to secure a similar result were noteworthy, though for the time ineffective.28 VII. As population increased in these years, the coast gradually yielded to the up-country's demands. This may be illustrated by the transfer of the capitals from the lowlands to the fall line and Valley. In 1779, Virginia changed her seat of government from Williamsburg to Richmond; in 1790, South Carolina, from Charleston to Columbia; in 1791, North Carolina, from Edenton to Raleigh; in 1797, New York, from New York City to Albany; in 1799, Pennsylvania, from Philadelphia to Lancaster. VIII. The democratic aspect of the new constitutions was also influenced by the frontier as well as by the prevalent Revolutionary philosophy; and the demands for paper money, stay 66 28 Weeks," Church and State in North Carolina" (Baltimore, 1893); "N. C. Colon. Records," x, p. 870; Curry, "Establishment and Disestablishment" (Phila., 1889); C. F. James, Documentary History of the Struggle for Religious Liberty in Virginia" (Lynchburg, Va., 1900); Semple, "The Virginia Baptists" (Richmond, 1810); Amer. Hist. Assoc. "Papers," ii, p. 21; iii, pp. 205, 213. and tender laws, etc., of this period were strongest in the inte rior. It was this region that supported Shays' Rebellion; it was (with some important exceptions) the same area that resisted the ratification of the federal constitution, fearful of a stronger government and of the loss of paper money. IX. The interior later showed its opposition to the coast by the persistent contest against slavery, carried on in the up-country of Virginia, and North and South Carolina. Until the decade 1830-40, it was not certain that both Virginia and North Carolina would not find some means of gradual abolition. The same influence accounts for much of the exodus of the Piedmont pioneers into Indiana and Illinois, in the first half of the nineteenth century.2 29 X. These were the regions, also, in which were developed the desire of the pioneers who crossed the mountains, and settled on the "Western waters," to establish new States free from control by the lowlands, owning their own lands, able to determine their own currency, and in general to govern themselves in accordance with the ideals of the Old West. They were ready also, if need be, to become independent of the Old Thirteen. Vermont must be considered in this aspect, as well as Kentucky and Tennessee.30 XI. The land system of the Old West furnished precedents which developed into the land system of the trans-Alleghany West.81 The squatters of Pennsylvania and the Carolinas 29 See Ballagh, "Slavery in Virginia," Johns Hopkins Univ. "Studies,” extra, xxiv; Bassett, "Slavery and Servitude in the Colony of North Carolina," Id., xiv, pp. 169-254; Bassett, "Slavery in the State of North Carolina," Id., xvii; Bassett, "Antislavery Leaders in North Carolina," Id., xvi; Weeks, "Southern Quakers," Id., xv, extra; Schaper, “Sectionalism in South Carolina," Amer. Hist. Assoc. Report," 1900; Turner, “Rise of the New West,” pp. 54-56, 76–78, 80, 90, 150–152. 30 See F. J. Turner, "State-Making in the West During the Revolutionary Era," in American Historical Review, i, p. 70. 31 Hening, x, p. 35; "Public Acts of N. C.," i, pp. 204, 306; "Revised |