Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1879-07-19
WHOLE NO. 2,278.
tennessee.

Tennessee.
A correspondent of the Nashville
American writing to second thi
movement initiated by the Tennes
see Historical Society to celebrat,
the centennial of the settlement o
Middle Tennessee, refers with 4
pride that will find a responsive
sentiment i'm the heart of every
Tennesseean, to the early history oil
the State. We publish the follow
ing extract:
Let us glance at her claims to this
distinction. Born at Wautaga in
1776, of castaway children, fleeing
from the tyranny of cruel mother,
she had neither cradle nor baby
hood, but passed at once into the
! stage of self-reliant youth, strang-
/ ling like Hercules the serpents sent
to destroy her. Breasting the storm
of Indian fury, she gradually pushed
it backward, growing stronger at
every step of her advance, holding
on with Anglo-Saxon tenacity to
every foot she had won, but paying
dearly, as she has always done, in a
currency of precious blood. In l774,
guided by patriotic impulses, by
the display Of which on so many
occasions, she has won the title of
the Volunteer State, she sent a body
of her sons to the help of Virginia,
on the great Kanawha, where, by
their knightly charge on the flank
at sunset, after the battle had hung
all day in the balance, the victory
was won and the Shawnee power
broken beyond recovery.
AT Kings Mountain the back
woods riflemen of the Wautaga set
Elements, under Sewer and Shelby,
helped to win the most important
and eventful battle that was ever
fought on the American Continent.
if the Judgment of Thomas jefferson
was right when he declared that it
was the turning point of the Revo-
lutiOn.o 1t was the darkest hour |
in American history when, on a
chill October day, that little band |
of patriots stood at the base of the |
mountain waiting the signal to as
sault its summit. Gates had been /
defeated at Camden, and Greene
alone of the continental forces in
the South, with a few brave spirits,
upheld the standard in the desperate
hope that fortune, in some mysteri-
Gus way, might accomplish the de-
liverance of his country. AT sunset
the cause of freedom had won, and
Kings Mountain stands to-day the
lOftieSt monument to American
valor in all this land of brave deeds
and mighty achievements, and next
TO the discovery of this continent by
Columbus, and the Declaration Of
independence, the grandest land
mark in the New Worlds history.
This victory wrenched a mighty
empire from the uses of kingly
power and changed the tide of hu-
man destiny for ages to come.
Then we recite the colonization of
what is now known as Middle Ten
nessee by James Robertson and
John Donelson, one pressing by
paths deeper and deeper
INTO the dark, mysterious and unin-
labited wilderness, where the great
leart-thrObs of undisturbed Nature
alone smote on the ear; the other
the same destination after
! five months voyage down the
Tennessee and up the Cumberland,
dangers of Indian attacks
md perils of engulfment, only
squalled in the fabled story of Scyl-
a and Ohrybdis, guided and guarded ,
1y the mighty hand of destiny,
which pointed to a promised land
new empire, the projection of
whose planes havelongsince reached
o the lakes on the north, the gulf
IN the south, and is bounded ON the I
vest only by the shores of the Pa
.iflo,
Passing without comment through
he eventful and trying scenes that
each step of progress on the
we come to another
,poch where Tennessee became the /
IVenger of Fort Mimms, and in a !
)rief campaign under Andrew Jack
on destroyed the power Of the Mus
lQgaR nation and virtually added {
Alabama and Mississippi to the
isterhOod of States. Then followed [
he dramatic story Of New Orleans,
md in the same connection Florida {
Decame the prize of her valor, Ar (
,ansas then becomes the tbeater for
ha display Of the restless energy of {
Ter sons, and to them it owed its
peedy habilitation as a State,
On the heels of this followed an
,ther stage, grand in events that
ave been and are yet to be, and in
t Tennessee valor and enterprise
hone with refulgent splendor In
accomplishing the independence Of {
Texas. Her Sons here set the enter
ng wedge, which a few years later ,
from the grasp of Mexico
he fairest portion of her fabric and !
Ldded to the Union some of her
ichest jewels, California, Utah, Col
'rado and New Mexico,