g in
some cases from the same mother country and subject here to the same
government. Why they differed so widely was due to their peculiar ideals
formed prior to their emigration from Europe and to their environment in
the New World. To the tidewater came a class whose character and
purposes, although not altogether alike, easily enabled them to develop
into an aristocratic class. All of them were trying to lighten the
burdens of life. In this section favored with fertile soil, mild
climate, navigable streams and good harbors facilitating direct trade
with Europe, the conservative, easy-going, wealth-seeking, exploiting
adventurers finally fell back on the institution of slavery which
furnished the basis for a large plantation system of seeming
principalities. In the course of time too there arose in the few towns
of the coast a number of prosperous business men whose bearing was
equally as aristocratic as that of the masters of plantations.[1] These
elements constituted the rustic nobility which lorded it over the
unfortunate settlers whom the plantation system forced to go into the
interior to take up land. Eliminating thus an enterprising middle class,
the colonists tended to become more aristocratic near the shore.

In this congenial atmosphere the eastern people were content to dwell.
the East had the West in mind and said much about its inexhaustible
resources, but with the exception of obtaining there grants of land nothing
definite toward the conquest of this section was done because of the
handicap of slavery which precluded the possibility of a rapid expansion of
the plantation group in the slave States. Separated thus by high ranges of
mountains which prevented the unification of the interests of the sections,
the West was left for conquest by a hardy race of European dissenters
who were capable of a more rapid growth.[2] these were the Germans and
Scotch-Irish with a sprinkling of Huguenots, Quakers and poor whites who
had served their time as indentured servants in the east.[3] The unsettled
condition of Europe during its devastating wars of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries caused many of foreign stocks to seek homes in America
where they hoped to realize political liberty and religious freedom. Many
of these Germans first settled in the mountainous district of Pennsylvania
and Maryland and then migrated later to the lower part of the Shenandoah
Valley, while the Scotch-Irish took possession of the