upper part of that
section. Thereafter the Shenandoah Valley became a thoroughfare for a
continuous movement of these immigrants toward the south into the uplands
and mountains of the Carolinas, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee.[4]

Among the Germans were Mennonites, Lutherans, and Moravians, all of whom
believed in individual freedom, the divine right of secular power, and
personal responsibility.[5] The strongest stock among these immigrants,
however, were the Scotch-Irish, "a God-fearing, Sabbath-keeping,
covenant-adhering, liberty-loving, and tyrant-hating race," which had
formed its ideals under the influence of philosophy of John Calvin, John
Knox, Andrew Melville, and George Buchanan. By these thinkers they had been
taught to emphasize equality, freedom of conscience, and political liberty.
These stocks differed somewhat from each other, but they were equally
attached to practical religion, homely virtues, and democratic
institutions.[7] Being a kind and beneficent class with a tenacity for the
habits and customs of their fathers, they proved to be a valuable
contribution to the American stock. As they had no riches every man was to
be just what he could make himself. Equality and brotherly love became
their dominant traits. Common feeling and similarity of ideals made them
one people whose chief characteristic was individualism.[8] Differing thus
so widely from the easterners they were regarded by the aristocrats as "Men
of new blood" and "Wild Irish," who formed a barrier over which "none
ventured to leap and would venture to settle among."[9] No aristocrat
figuring conspicuously in the society of the East, where slavery made men
socially unequal, could feel comfortable on the frontier, where freedom
from competition with such labor prevented the development of caste.

The natural endowment of the West was so different from that of the East
that the former did not attract the people who settled in the Tidewater.
The mountaineers were in the midst of natural meadows, steep hills, narrow
valleys of hilly soil, and inexhaustible forests. In the East tobacco
and corn were the staple commodities. Cattle and hog raising became
profitable west of the mountains, while various other employments which
did not require so much vacant land were more popular near the sea.
Besides, when the dwellers near the coast sought the cheap labor which the
slave furnished the mountaineers encouraged the influx of freemen. It is
not str