he settlement. Evidently no one had the least idea that there was
any legal irregularity in such proceedings.[53]

The McAfees themselves and the escaped convict servant whom they
captured typify the two prominent classes of the backwoods people. The
frontier, in spite of the outward uniformity of means and manners, is
preeminently the place of sharp contrasts. The two extremes of society,
the strongest, best, and most adventurous, and the weakest, most
shiftless, and vicious, are those which seem naturally to drift to the
border. Most of the men who came to the backwoods to hew out homes and
rear families were stern, manly, and honest; but there was also a large
influx of people drawn from the worst immigrants that perhaps ever were
brought to America--the mass of convict servants, redemptioners, and the
like, who formed such an excessively undesirable substratum to the
otherwise excellent population of the tide-water regions in Virginia and
the Carolinas.[54] Many of the southern crackers or poor whites spring
from this class, which also in the backwoods gave birth to generations
of violent and hardened criminals, and to an even greater number of
shiftless, lazy, cowardly cumberers of the earth's surface. They had in
many places a permanently bad effect upon the tone of the whole
community.

Moreover, the influence of heredity was no more plainly perceptible than
was the extent of individual variation. If a member of a bad family
wished to reform, he had every opportunity to do so; if a member of a
good family had vicious propensities, there was nothing to check them.
All qualities, good and bad, are intensified and accentuated in the life
of the wilderness. The man who in civilization is merely sullen and
bad-tempered becomes a murderous, treacherous ruffian when transplanted
to the wilds; while, on the other hand, his cheery, quiet neighbor
develops into a hero, ready uncomplainingly to lay down his life for his
friend. One who in an eastern city is merely a backbiter and slanderer,
in the western woods lies in wait for his foe with a rifle; sharp
practice in the east becomes highway robbery in the west; but at the
same time negative good-nature becomes active self-sacrifice, and a
general belief in virtue is translated into a prompt and determined war
upon vice. The ne'er-do-well of a family who in one place has his debts
paid a couple of times and is then forced to resign from his clubs and
lead a cloudy but inno