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Are All Men Equal ?
And that is what happened. To the frontier line came the dissatisfied, the indentured servants, the adventure-lovers, the ambitious who saw no chance to rise in the older settlement. To the frontier, too, came the newer immigrants, hungry for a piece of land of their own. In the older settlements land was expensive and the best land had already been taken up, but here at the farthest edge on the frontier line, good cheap land was obtainable. Thousands of newly arrived Germans and Scotch-Irish went into the back country of Pennsylvania, down the valley into the neighboring colonies of Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas .
As more and more people came, the frontier line kept moving westward. The Indian found the line creeping up on him, pushing him farther and farther back. The fur trader left the edge of the settlements and followed the Indian trails to the wilderness. The white hunter and trapper did the same. With these people the Indian had no quarrel except when they cheated him in a trade --- which they often did. They carried on the same work he did; they did not destroy his home. But as the edge of the farming
settlements moved on and on, the Indian saw his trees cut down and his wilderness home replaced by the white man's clearing. This had been going on long enough for him to understand that farming and hunting could not go on in the same place together, that as the white farmer moved in, he, the hunter, had to move out. The Indian knew this and fought every step of the settlers' advance .
The frontier line was bloodstained. The rifle of the frontiersman was always within easy reach. His wife and children, both boys and girls, must not stray too far from the house; they must learn very early to pay attention to slight noises. No matter what they were doing --- building or planting or playing --- their ears must be ever alert. Indian attacks were sudden , still and swift , and the penalty for carelessness or unpreparedness was a horrible death.
Life at the frontier was dangerous and hard. There were none of the soft refinements of civilization. It was life in the raw, fighting savages, chopping down trees, planting corn, making furniture --- work, hard work and lots of it. This pioneer life made you tough, if you lived. Only the strongest did live. And here there could be no class rule ---one man was as good as another. Rich man and poor man were on the same terms. Here a man was successful according to what
he himself did, not for what his father or grandfather was. The frontiersman faced hard work all the time; he had to tackle and conquer difficult obstacles at every turn. He succeeded, and carried his head high. He grew independent. The frontiersman heartily believed that "a fool can put on his own coat better than a wise man can do it for him. " Having mastered the wilderness, the frontiersman was not now ready to take orders from any upper class. He would be his own boss.
So it was the frontiersman who led in the fierce struggle against rule by a few. There were many such fights. The upper
classes, so long the rulers of the old settlements, now used to it, and liking it, were not ready to give up their power.
Allow these rough, uneducated, coarse people , who dressed and lived like savages , to question their authority? Absurd! They
would teach these vulgar, unrefined upstarts to respect their betters. The rich merchants and landowners of the coast would never
turn over their lawmaking power to uncouth backwoodsmen unless they were forced to do so. Here and there armed attacks occurred. The rich merchants and landowners saw their Old World idea of upper-class rule of the few challenged by the American frontiersmen with their New World idea of the equality of man. It was a long, hard, bitterly fought contest.
From We, the People (first published in 1932)
by Leo Huberman.
Approximately 2,600 words.
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