CHAPTER XVII.

FROM TIDEWATER TO THE MOUNTAINS.

Family and early career of Alexander Spotswood 370

He brings the privilege of _habeas corpus_ to Virginia, but wrangles much with his burgesses 371

His energy and public spirit 372

How the Post-Office Act was resisted by the people 373, 375

Disputes as to power of appointing parsons 376

Beginnings of continental politics in America 376

Beginning of the seventy years’ struggle with France 377

How the continental situation in America was affected by the war of the Spanish succession 378, 379

Different views of Spotswood and the assembly with regard to sending aid to Carolina 379, 380

How the royal governors became convinced that the thing most needed in English America was a continental government that could impose taxes 381

Franklin’s plan for a federal union 381, 383

It was the failure of the colonies to adopt Franklin’s plan that led soon afterwards to the Stamp Act 382, 383

How Spotswood regarded the unknown West 383

Attempts to cross the Blue Ridge 384

How the Blue Ridge was crossed by Spotswood 385

Knights of the Golden Horseshoe 386

Spotswood’s plan for communicating between Virginia and Lake Erie 387, 388

Condition of the postal service in the English colonies under Spotswood’s administration 389

Brief mention of Governors Gooch and Dinwiddie 390

Importance of the Scotch-Irish migration to America 390, 391

In 1611 James I. began colonizing Ulster with settlers from Scotland and England 391

In Ulster they established flourishing manufactures of woollens and linens 392

Which excited the jealousy of rival manufacturers in England 393

Legislation against the Ulster manufacturers 393

Civil disabilities inflicted upon Presbyterians in Ulster 393

These circumstances caused such a migration to America that by 1770 it amounted to more than half a million souls 394

Many Scotch-Irish settled in the Shenandoah Valley, and were closely followed by Germans 395

This Shenandoah population exerted a most powerful democratizing influence upon the colony 396

Jefferson found in them his most powerful supporters 396

Lord Fairfax’s home at Greenway Court; Fairfax’s affection for Washington 397

How the surveying of Fairfax’s frontier estates led Washington on to his public career 398

The advance of Virginians from tidewater to the mountains brought on the final struggle with France 398, 399

Advance of the French from Lake Erie 399

Washington goes to warn them from encroaching upon English territory 399

MAPS.

Westward Growth of Old Virginia, _from a sketch by the author_ _Frontispiece_

North Carolina Precincts in 1729, _after a map in Hawks’s History of North Carolina_ 276

A Map of y^e most Improved Part of Carolina, _from Winsor’s America_, vol. v. p. 351 306

OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.